“Possum Kingdom” by the Toadies is in 15/4.
Quite a few listed here including:
5/4 “YYZ” (the intro only) by Rush, “Face Dances Part Two” by Pete Townshend, “Living in the Past” by Jethro Tull, “The Grudge” by Tool, “Seven Days” by Sting,.
7/4 “Money” by Pink Floyd, “Hello Radio” by They Might Be Giants, numerous Genesis and especially Rush songs, “Yellow Snow” by Frank Zappa, “The Munificent Seven” and “Saint Augustine in Hell” by Sting. John Lennon’s “All You Need is Love” features a changing meter (7/4 and 4/4 for the verses, 4/4 for the choruses).
15/4 “The Wait” by The Pretenders
(3+2+4)/8 – “Supper’s Ready” (the “Apocalypse in 9/8” section) by Genesis
That’s not right at all. The first passage you describe does not contain triplets; they’re straight eighth notes in 4/4, just accented as four groups of three plus one group of four. It’s the break in the middle of the song (“Sun, sun, sun, here it comes”) where the shifting meters come into play, with a repeating pattern of 2/4 + 3/8 + 3/8 + 3/8 + 5/8 + 4/4.
“All You Need Is Love” is also noted for its woozy, irregular alternation of 4/4 and 3/4 times.
The Pretenders’ “Tattooed Love Boys” is in some goofy meter – guitarist James Honeyman-Scott’s guess was 7/13.
Am I misremembering, or isn’t there an Al Green hit that had an unusual meter?
I haven’t seen the sheet music in years but, IIRC, “Tubular Bells” switches between 4/4 and 5/4.
Nah, that’s not right. It’s 4/4 from start to finish. Its verse-chorus cycle is 10 measures rather than 8 or 12, but a lot of songs work out that way.
Soundgarden had a lot of songs with unusual meters.
You mean the opening theme? That’s a cycle of three measures of 7/8 followed by a measure of 9/8; rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat…
The Pixies did quite a bit of this. Off the top of my head, “There Goes My Gun” switches between 7/4 and 3/4, and “La La Love You” is in 5/4.
Frank Black (formerly Black Francis, frontman of the Pixies) does some of this in his solo stuff too; “I Switched You” (from the album Pistolero) switches between 5/4 and 4/4. “Nadine” (Show Me Your Tears) is in, I think, 10/4? I’m not sure how to figure that out; it’s 12-bar blues with the final two bars missing. I guess it’s more like two measures of 4/4 and then one of 2/4.
There’s also the song “I’ve Seen Your Picture” (Dog in the Sand), in which the narrator gets more and more excited singing three lines over and over, and the words get more and more hurried as the musical lines get shorter. I’m probably not describing it properly; it’s extremely cool.
There are a few more that I can’t think of right now. It’s going to drive me nuts.
Well, in the early 80’s, King Crimson sometimes played in 21/8.
Bassist Tony Levin mocked the band’s penchant for odd meters in his “King Crimson Barbershop” tune, which goes:
“I’m Tony. I’m Billy. I’m Bobby. I’m Belew.
We’re here to sing and play for you.
Oh, we’re the King Crimson band - and don’t you know it
We’re the best in all the land - all the land
We play bass and the drums and guitar for you
And if you really want we’ll throw the Stick in too
Oh, we’re the King Crimson band, on E.G. Records
And you know we think that’s grand
So, settle back to have some fun
And tap your foot in twenty-one
Cause we’re the King Crimson band - you better believe it
The king crimson band - we don’t do encores
The king crimson band - no photos please
Cause we’re the King Crimson band - we don’t do “21st Century Schizoid Man,”
But we’re the King Crimson band.”
**Rush ** has quite a few songs with unusual meters. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any rught at the moment, and I can’t locate my Rush Songbook.
Actually, I think you’ll find its 3 bars of 4 followed by a bar of 2 then 2 more bars of 4… or, if you prefer, 2 bars of 4, a bar of 6 and then 2 bars of 4.
Then there’s pretty much every song by the band I am currently playing in…
Didnt think I’d get to the bottom of that page without reading ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers which I think is generally in 6/4 but in the turnaround alternates between that and 4/4 (says he counting the drumming fingers on desk).
MiM
Yeah, when you reach RUSH you basically have to give up. I once heard drummer Neil Peart say something like ‘The important thing is the music. Write the music you want to write and work out what time signature it’s in later.’
Oy!
Paranoid Android by Radiohead has some passages of 7/8 in the choruses. That was before they went in for the really weird stuff.
Re Hey Ya, I always figured it was just 4/4 and 2/4 as buns3000 said. However, Rolling Stone magazine seems to think it is in 11/4.
I just had another listen and you can count it in 11/4 but it really doesn’t fit with the beat IMO, as the snare beats come on the offbeat if you count it like that:
Basic drum tab, S= snare, B = bass. A and B stand in for 10 and 11, hexadecimal fans!
S x x x x x x x x x x x x
B x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + A + B +
It makes much more sense to think of it like this:
S x x x x x x x x x x x x
B x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Also, if we’re talking timing weirdness on this song, note how the count-in at the start only goes up to three!
I believe Soundgarden’s big single “Outshined” was in 7/4.
The intro/instrumental breaks are 3+3+3+4; the verses and outro are straight 3/4.
What about Black Dog by Led Zep? That’s a bizarre time signature.
The Who’s “Music Must Change” is in 6/8. The percussion on the song is Pete Townshend’s footsteps, recorded for the song’s demo. Keith Moon was nearing the bottom of his downward spiral and was apparently unable to manage drumming with that time signature.