There are two kinds of summer: the one where you actually fly somewhere warm, and the one where you sit indoors on a grey Tuesday and play Shotgun until the room feels vaguely tropical. This clip is firmly, unapologetically Team Grey Tuesday — no beach, no sunscreen, no hot sun, just me and a guitar manufacturing vitamin D by hand.
What you're getting is a MelodyChords arrangement of George Ezra's absurdly cheerful hit: the vocal melody and the chords crammed onto a single guitar, so the tune stands on its own without a band, a synth, or a single "riding shotgun" backing vocalist.
How this Shotgun arrangement works
Under all that sunshine, Shotgun rides the single most reliable engine in pop: a I–V–vi–IV loop in D major — that's D, A, Bm and G, the exact four chords holding up roughly half the songs you've ever hummed. The MelodyChords trick is to stop thinking of "melody" and "chords" as two separate jobs. Instead you put George Ezra's vocal line on the top strings, as the highest note in every grip, then imply those four chords underneath with the lower strings — one instrument doing two things at once.
The concrete takeaway you can steal for any pop song: the highest note is always the melody, everything below it is harmony. If the tune ever vanishes mid-arrangement, you've simply buried it under too many notes — thin the chord out, drop a string or two, and let that top voice keep singing. It's the same four-chord logic you'll find in the sunnier corners of the MelodyChords series.
Is it the same as flying somewhere with an actual hot sun? No. Is it cheaper than a plane ticket and legal to do at 2am? Absolutely. If you want the Guitar Pro file and the tab so your fretting hand can ride shotgun too, it's all on my Patreon.