Every good thing comes to an end, and apparently so does my ability to leave a perfectly nice pop song alone. Nelly Furtado, Timbaland, and a whole orchestra of mournful strings built this one to make you stare wistfully out of a train window — and I looked at all that and thought, "yes, but what if just me and six strings?"
So this is All Good Things (Come to an End) as a fingerstyle chord-melody arrangement for solo guitar. Just over eighty seconds, no band, no backing track — the melody and the chords living in the same six strings at the same time. It is one of my MelodyChords arrangements, which is a fancy way of saying I made one guitar do three people's jobs.
How a chord-melody arrangement actually works
The trick is a strict hierarchy: the melody is the boss and always sits as the highest note. Your thumb handles the bass — usually the root of the chord — down on the lower strings, while the middle strings get just enough chord tones to imply the harmony without burying the tune. You almost never play the full six-string chord; you play the melody note on top, the root underneath, and one or two notes in between that colour it. The wistful, slightly minor mood of this song comes precisely from those inner voices moving under a mostly-still melody, which is basically voice leading doing quiet emotional damage.
The one takeaway that makes any pop tune arrangeable: pluck the melody note a touch harder than everything else — a firmer stroke with your ring finger — so it floats clearly above the accompaniment. Your ear will fill in the "missing" band. Get that balance right and a solo guitar genuinely sounds like more than one instrument.
And if it all comes to an end before you nail bar four, don't worry — I have the full tabs and Guitar Pro files waiting so you can fail in high definition on Patreon.