Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry opens with one of the most quietly powerful chord progressions in popular music: C, G, Am, F, cycling with a gentle, unhurried inevitability that feels both deeply familiar and deeply comforting. The movement from C major through G to the relative minor of A minor carries a subtle emotional dip, a moment of longing or reflection, before the F major resolves everything back toward warmth and reassurance. That return to F feels like a sigh of acceptance, and the whole sequence has a natural gravitational pull that draws listeners in before a single word is sung. Released in 1974, the song sits at the heart of roots reggae, where rhythm and feeling carry equal weight, and that opening progression captures exactly the genre's gift for turning sorrow into something tender and sustaining.