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Home ❯ Songs ❯ Cat Stevens ❯

Wild World

by Cat Stevens • Lesson #282 • Jan 31, 2020

About this lesson

Hey friends! Here’s my lesson for Wild World by Cat Stevens. Played in the key of C, this is an intermediate song (requiring only 1 barre chord) which offers many opportunities to add fills & riffs in between your normal strums. I’ll teach you the intro, verse, chorus, the various riffs and fills, as well as walking you through a few different strumming patterns. I hope you find this helpful!

  • 0:00 Playthrough & overview
  • 1:54 Chord shapes
  • 4:39 Chord progressions
  • 8:25 Strumming patterns
  • 10:54 Riff: Esus4 lick
  • 12:10 Riff: G7 Walkdown
  • 15:13 Riff: Chorus Scale Walkdown
  • 16:56 Riff: Chorus Bass Line
  • 19:20 Final advice

Get My Practice Guide

If you’d like the members-only practice guide that shows the chords, explains the riffs, breaks down the rhythm & strumming patterns, and much more — you can download it here. It requires membership to Song Notes Premium. Note, this does not include the full lyrics for the whole song – if that’s what you want, get my licensed song sheet (linked below).

Licensed Song Sheet 3 pages

Follow along with my print-friendly guide for this song! It’s available for purchase at Musicnotes.com, the web’s leading provider of licensed sheet music.

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Related & Recommended

If you’re looking for some other Cat Stevens guitar lessons, I’ve got a few! This includes my rhythm & counting deep-dive for Wild World, should you want guidance with the tempo & BPM.

Rhythm Deep Dive: "Wild World" by Cat Stevens

★ Instructional PDF

Practice Notes for "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens

★ Instructional PDF

"Father and Son" by Cat Stevens

$ Song Sheet Available

"The Wind" by Cat Stevens

$ Song Sheet Available


If you’re after some Cat Stevens recordings of Wild World, here’s a few you can reference. The first is his studio recording (1970), and the second is a live performance (1971).

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