How many pop songs are there out there that use the slow shuffle beat?
The only two examples I can think of are:
Black Velvet, the one-hit wonder by Alannah Myles, and,
Vixen, by Cement Pond, for the Redneck Rampage soundtrack, which is so similar to “Black Velvet” that multiple people on the video have brought it up.
Are there any other notable pop songs with this beat?
For some reason it seems to pair well with a breathy female voice. I can’t really imagine it in any other context, but that’s probably because I haven’t heard it in any other context.
That is a great song, but it’s not really a shuffle, is it? A shuffle is the beat in Madonna’s True Blue, for instance. Notice the repeating bass pattern and syncopation of the rhythm. Black Velvet is basically the same beat but slower.
A shuffle is a one-and-a-two-and-a-one-and-a-two beat - SRV’s patented Texas Shuffle on Pride & Joy the most obvious example to my ear. And yes, it is typically swung - hard not to lay back a bit when you get into a shuffle groove - but swing is a separate concept.
drastic_quench, I hadn’t fully processed that Talking Heads’ version of Take Me to the River is a slow shuffle, but as I noodle through it, it is, isn’t it? It certainly makes my backbone slide.
I suppose, depending on how strict the interpretation is. I played sax in a jazz band for years, so I’m not unfamiliar. Maybe it’s just because when I replay that song in my head it’s got more a swingy beat to it. Whatever the case, I do like the song.
Wow, I hope the lawyers for Sam Cooke’s estate never heard that song. Because it is very, very similar to “Nothing Can Change this Love”. So that’s another one.
Does the beat in Murder By Death’s The Devil Drives count as a shuffle? It sounds like a…soft-spoken, mumbled version of a shuffle to me, anyway, but I’m not a drummer.
- but swing is a separate concept.