Let It Be for me. The four chords C, G, Am, F are work for hundreds of songs, so it seemed like the right amount for me to bite off (first timer at 60, haven't touched a musical instrument since the Carter administration before last month, and even back then, I was not at all proficient at anything), while also being useful for later songs. I especially like the version of Let It Be in
this tutorial at Ukulele Cheats, which has a nice 3-string finger-picked transition from F to C that made it feel like I'm playing the actual song. A lot of simplified tutorials shave off the bits that are most distinctive, but this guy Vasko really tries to recover and rearrange them.
One bit that tripped me up, though. This song is loooong. I really slowed myself down by insisting on playing it all the way through. The good news is that it was simple to learn and felt really satisfying to have my wife spontaneously start singing as I was getting the hang of it...but I don't have an organ or electric guitar solo or Ringo or a voice like Paul's that made it so compelling to hear the whole thing all the way through.
Then I remembered all those Sunday mornings in church as a boy (in the lowest of the low Protestant churches) where we only sang the first and fourth verses of Amazing Grace and all the other hymns, and all of a sudden, I got my life back. LOL All I REALLY need to get what I personally need out of Let It Be is first verse, chorus, one more verse (sometimes second, sometimes last), do the chorus twice, then on with my day. LOL
But it feels crazy good to have started with a song that has meant a lot to me for 50 years, and to have it immediately recognized by someone randomly walking into the room, even without me singing it. Which in the scheme of things, probably made it easier to recognize. LOL
Second song was Knockin' On Heaven's Door, four chords again, not only short, but NICE AND SLOW, and an excuse to learn the G and D chords.
Another nice tutorial from Ukulele Cheats.
Same thing in both cases. It sounds like a real song, real fast, lays the foundation for lots of other songs, and I don't need to worry about lyrics while I'm also learning chords and strum patterns and such.