In My Secret Life Chords

Guitar Chord Tutorial: In My Secret Life by Paul McCartney

What Are the In My Secret Life Chords?

The song sits in G major at a steady 4/4 with a tempo hovering around 120 BPM. The basic chord vocabulary you'll use across most of the track is G, D/F#, Em7, C, D, Am7, D7, and a few others that show up briefly. It's not technically difficult, but McCartney does some bass movement that makes the voicings matter more than just punching through open shapes.

The verse progression runs through a G to D/Fto Em7 to C pattern, with the Fin the bass giving it that walking quality. Then the chorus pulls in an Am7 leading into a D7, which sets up the return to G cleanly. The bridge introduces a Bm7b5 and an E7 for a brief moment of tension before everything resolves back to the familiar ground. For the Em7, you can just drop your pinky off the high E string from a regular Em shape. The C is standard. The tricky part is getting smooth voice leading between D/Fand Em7 — your ring finger lifts, your middle finger slides down to the A string, second fret, and you're there. Don't rush it. The chorus Am7 to D7 is simpler than it sounds. Am7 is just an A minor with your pinky on the high E string, third fret. The D7 swaps out the D major shape for the one-note alteration — flat seventh, so your ring finger goes to the third fret of the G string instead of the high E. This is a change-over people mess up in live settings because it looks like nothing changed visually, but the sound is distinctly different.

Tab and Full Progression

Verse: G | 3-0-0-0-0-3 D/F| 2-3-0-2-0-0 Em7 | 0-2-2-0-0-0 C | x-3-2-0-1-0 Chorus: Am7 | x-0-2-2-1-0 D7 | x-0-0-2-1-0 Bridge: Bm7b5 | x-2-1-2-0-1 E7 | 0-2-0-1-0-2

I ran into a problem last year when someone asked me about fingerstyle versus strumming on this one. The charted chords above assume a basic strumming pattern, but McCartney's original uses a very specific picked pattern where the bass notes alternate in a way that doesn't work if you're just hammering downstrokes and upstrokes. The workaround was switching to a Travis-picking approach where the thumb anchors on the bass strings and the fingers handle the higher strings independently. It added about twenty minutes of practice time, but it sounded like the record instead of a cover band demo. Another issue is the Bm7b5 in the bridge. People either chord-skip it entirely or turn it into a plain Bm, which changes the whole color of the phrase. The half-diminished quality is subtle but essential for how the E7 resolves. It's one of those places where the chord isn't flashy, but it does real work harmonically. The tempo is another thing that sneaks up on you. The song sits at roughly 120 BPM and a lot of guitarists speed through it unconsciously because the chord changes aren't frequent. If you practice with a metronome at 90 BPM first and then gradually add speed, you'll keep the groove tight instead of rushing into a frantic mess. I've seen people lose the pocket on this song at gigs just because they didn't lock in the timing early on.

If you want the chords quickly for a set or a session, search In My Secret Life Chords and you'll find plenty of tab sites, but the voicings I've outlined here are closer to what McCartney actually plays. The difference is small in isolation but noticeable when you're playing with a band or backing track. The Fbass note, the Em7 instead of Em, the D7 instead of D — those are the things that make it sound right rather than correct.