Lizzo – Cuz I Love You (Chords)
What a joy it’s been to see Lizzo getting the attention she deserves this year. For a long time, pop music has been dominated by singers reaching back to Aretha Franklin for and extrapolating endless vocal curlicues. Whereas Lizzo has gone for the real meat and taken Franklin’s powerful emotional directness. Never more powerfully than on Cuz I Love You‘s title track which takes the old blues-wailer format and updates it wit and style.
The song is heavy on chromatic chord changes. So much so that it contains every major chord except A. In case all of that is a bit much for you, I’ve written up a simplified version of the chords with a capo on the second fret below.
Suggested Strumming Pattern
The song is in 6/8 time, so I use this as the main pattern:
d – d u d – d – d – d –
Intro: Use the main strum. On the first chord of each bar you play d – d u d – d -. Then one down-strum each on the descending/ascending chords.
Verses: Play the main strum once for the first chord on that line. Then continue with that chord and play the strum as in the intro.
Chorus: Play the first half of the main strum (d – d u d -) twice each on the first two lines. Then the intro strum for the next line. Then d – d u d – once each for each chord from Bb to D then a single down-strum on the Eb. After that, it’s back to the intro strum. Or you can replace all the d – d u d – strums with
Outro: The outro uses the same strum but the chords flip things a little. The first line is the same intro strum (don’t be thrown off by the opening G, that’s a hang over from the chorus). Which continues up to the Ab in the second line. Then instead of going chromatically down it switches to Eb-E move. So you’re playing d – d u d – on the Ab then one down-strum each on the Eb-E.
Use that same pattern for a long F followed by a short Db-Eb. Then play d – d u d – once each for E-B-Bb and one down-strum on the F#.
Easy Version
Cuz I Love You (Simplified Chords)
Easy Version Strumming
You can use the same same main strum as the other version:
d – d u d – d – d – d –
Intro: Main strum once per chord.
Verse: Main strum twice per chord. Or you can go with
d u d u d u d – d – d –
Chorus: Play d – d u d -:
– Four times on the first two chords.
– Twice each on the third line.
– Once each on the fourth line with just one down-strum on the C.
– Twice each chord on the last two lines.
Outro: d – d u d – twice each for every chord on the first line. Then twice on D, once on G. Then a single down-strum on Eb.
