The ukulele is one of the easiest instruments to pick up and play, but that doesn't mean you're going to sound great the first time you pick up and play it. While it's faster to learn than most instruments, you do still have to learn how to play. The thing everyone wants to do as soon as possible is play their first song, so this list goes over easy ukulele songs for beginners.

It's important to keep in mind though that the way we're determining what's "easy" is by what chords you are likely to have learned in the beginning. Before you can do any songs you'll need to start learning some chords, and then you can learn to play some songs and put them together.

The first three songs that should be pretty easy to play are Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Happy Birthday, and I Wanna Be Like You (from the Disney film The Jungle Book).

Most people are looking to play something more current and popular though, and once you master the chords C, F, and G you can go ahead and play the songs "Five Years Time" by Noah and the Whale, "This Too Shall Pass" by OK Go, and "The Bucket" by Kings of Leon. All three of these songs are fairly popular and current and are more likely to impress people when you play them, because they're not songs people will expect a beginning ukulele player to play, even though they're fairly easy (others just won't know that).

Of course, the more chords you add to your knowledge database, the more you'll be able to play! With just a few more chords you'll be able to play a lot more than the ones listed above, soon you'll be able to try songs like The Addams Family Theme, "Foundations" by Kate Nash, "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend, "Kiss With a Fist" by Florence and the Machine, and "Be Ok" and "You and I" by Ingrid Michaelson. Another great one is "Creep" by Radiohead, which was covered on the ukulele by Amanda Palmer.

Once you start learning some more and can conquer some more difficult songs, the easiest way to add to the chords you can play and learn new songs is to look up songs that you like and see if there are ukulele tutorials for the song. Most songs these days have been covered and tutorialed, everything from The Beatles to Lady Gaga ukulele covers are out there these days.

Remember, a song that's supposed to be easy is only said to be so because it assumes you'll learn those chords first. If you have a hard time with a song marked "easy" don't let it discourage you! It just means you need to take some time to learn the chords in that song first.