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Love Is a 12-Bar Blues






08.16.25“I played the blues in twelve bars down Lover's Lane / And you never did have the intelligence to use the twelve keys hanging off from my chain”
Accompanying Track: Your Latest Trick by Dire StraitsI was in the shower listening to Your Latest Trick by Dire Straits, one of many times, when the lyrics made me pause.

Love is a 12-bar blues. Four bars of the I chord, two bars of the IV chord, two bars of the I chord, then the V-IV-I. In every key, it is the same, the same pattern.

No matter how expressive the solo, how expansive the improvisation, everything lives within the set structure. You know how it will resolve. It is predictable, no matter how beautiful.

You can try and play the blues for someone who already knows the form well, who has played it many times before.

But if you both know how it will end, how else can you play the tune?




AMIE TIAN