Do you really listen to the chords that closely? For a lot of music, the chords are either largely hinted at (bass notes, the lead guitar or rhythm guitar lick, and how the melody move) and if there is an instrument banging out the exact chord progression, it's usually buried under the stuff or at least the vocal.

If I'm writing a song, I'm spending almost all of my time doing things tangential to the chord progressions, but rarely any time on the chord progressions themselves. So usually I'll start with a guitar lick or vocal melody, put a chord progression behind it, and then figure out the rest of the arrangement.

If there's a song that's memorable to me, it's almost always because of the main melody or guitar, not the underlying chords.

I'm only talking about pop-based music here, so rock, pop, country, etc.