Here's the awkward truth about Just Give Me A Reason: it's a duet. Two people, arguing very melodically about whether the relationship is broken or just bent. And if you're sitting at home with one guitar and, statistically, nobody willing to sing the Nate Ruess part, that's a problem. So I did the sensible thing and had a single guitar play both roles, no relationship counselling required.
This clip is a MelodyChords arrangement of Pink's ballad: the vocal melody sits on top, the chords hold it up from underneath, and your thumb quietly does the job of the piano's left hand. One instrument, the whole song, and precisely zero band members to split the royalties with.
How this MelodyChords arrangement works
The whole trick of chord melody is a strict pecking order: the melody note must always be the highest thing you play, and everything else has to fit underneath it without stepping on it. So for each moment I pick a chord voicing whose top note IS the sung melody, then thin out the rest — root in the thumb, a couple of inner notes for colour, and I ruthlessly drop anything that would poke up above the tune. Just Give Me A Reason is friendly for this because the progression barely moves (it loops around a handful of chords), which means your fretting hand can camp near one shape while the melody walks across the top strings.
The useful takeaway: don't try to grab the "full" chord. Ask "what's the melody note right now, and what's the smallest grip that harmonises it?" Nine times out of ten a two- or three-note voicing sings better than a fat six-string barre, because the listener's ear follows the top voice and happily imagines the rest. If you want the same idea on a gentler song first, the Can't Help Falling In Love arrangement is basically the training-wheels version.
And yes, playing both halves of a duet by yourself is a little on the nose for a breakup song — but at least this way nobody's out of tune except, occasionally, me. If you want the tabs and the Guitar Pro file to argue with in slow motion, they're waiting on my Patreon.