Playing without chord sheets

One of the end goals of the Kanikipila sessions is to be able to play without chord sheets. So it's a good feeling when that does happen. Like when I happened to be doing a playalong to "Last Christmas." I realized it was a 1-6-2-5 progression throughout the whole song. That meant I could play it without worrying about the odd chord change here or there that didn't follow the progression or getting out of sync between the lyrics and the music. It was a virtual playalong but I think that if it had been in an actual physical group setting I would have been able to look around at the other players and spectators and enjoyed the moment much more. So it is worth the effort to figure out a song's chord progression rather than just play chord following chord without thinking about their relationships.