Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
Artist: Van Morrison
Release: 1967
Album: Blowin’ Your Mind
Brown Eyed Girl has had over 16 million hits just on YouTube!! Van The Man says he’s never received a penny in royalties – but then have you ever heard of Bang records?
It dates from an age when you would make a feature of the fact that the recording was in stereo.
All we know is that if you write a chorus with the words Sha la la la .. la te da people are going to sing along!
Structure
Brown Eyed Girl has an interesting structure.
It has a refrain at the end of each verse – these are lines that get repeated with the same words – here its the word ‘my brown eyed girl, yeah you, my brown eyed girl’. Talk about making sure your audience will remember the title!
It also has a strange 2 bar pre-chorus which forms a nice link to the big joining in bit of the sha la la chorus.
So the structure is:
Intro, verse 1+ refrain, verse 2 + refrain, pre chorus, chorus, instrumental, verse 3 + refrain, pre chorus, chorus to fade.
Strum Pattern
There are 4 beats to the bar in this piece.
We’ll upload a video of how to do the strum pattern soon, promise!
MAIN PATTERN
This strum pattern is in quavers and starts on beat 1.
Stroke: D (U) D U (D) U D (U)
Count: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
Chords
Lyrics
Instrumental(|G 2 3 4 |C 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 :|| Verses |G 2 3 4 |C 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 Hey where did we go days where the rains came What ever happened tuesday is so slow so hard to find my way now that im all on my own |G 2 3 4 |C 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 down in the hollow playing a new game going down the old mine with a tran--sis-----tor ra---dio i saw you just the other day my you have grown |G 2 3 4 |C 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 laughing and a running hey hey skipping and a jumping standing in the sunglight laugh--ing hidin' behind a rainbow wall cast my memory back there lord sometimes im overcome thinking bout it |G 2 3 4 |C 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 in the mis-----ty mor---ning fog with ah our hearts are thumping with you slip-ping and a sli--ding all along the water fall with you making love in the green grass behind the sta-------dium with you Refrain |C 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |Em 2 3 4 my brown eyed girl |C 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |D7 2 3 4 yeah you my brown eyed girl (Do you re- 2 bars pre chorus |D7 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 -mem ber when we used to sing Chorus |D7 2 3 4 |D7 2 3 4 -member when we used to sing sha la la la la la la |G 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |C 2 3 4 la la lala te da sha la la la la la la |G 2 3 4 |D 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 |G 2 3 4 la la lala te da la te da Instrumental