Um… I’m pretty sure I spent my time the week this was covered in music appreciation class peeking out the window at the women walking by wearing summer dresses.
How exactly does one tell time signatures in songs?
Well, I always thought most of it was 3/4 time (has that waltzing feel to it), however Wikipedia states:
…Guess I need to revise my music theory!
Bill Bruford’s book When in Doubt, Roll has the basic drum and bass/stick pattern written out. It’s essentially in 17/16, but with the bass drum playing even quarter notes, so the “one” only comes together after four repetitions of the pattern.
Well the simple answer is “what can you count to before you reach the downbeat (or accented beat)?” Most songs are in 4/4, which means if you were dancing to it, for example, you would count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. A waltz, which is in 3/4, only has three beats per measure, so it’s 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3.
The bottom number in the fraction is the kind of beat that gets the note, and the top number is how many beats each measure gets. So 4/4 means a quarter note gets the beat, and there are 4 per measure. 6/8 means an eighth note gets the beat, and there are 6 in each measure. Most blues songs are in 12/8 (which is pretty much the same as 6/8), to give you some perspective.
I know several of Sting’s songs fit this category, and I actually found this list that might help.
Oh and I just thought of another one… “Everything’s Alright” from Jesus Christ Superstar is in 5/4.
Another Led Zeppelin song (probably ever less ‘popular’ than ‘Four Sticks’) is ‘The Crunge’, from ‘Houses of the Holy’.
I’m no expert here, but there’s a difference between an unusual number of beats per measure (i.e., something other than 2, 3, or 4), and a changing number of beats per measure.
Some of the Carter Family’s songs would routinely drop a beat or two resulting in a nice little surprise or other dramatic effect.
Many early blues songs were quite complicated (Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Skip James, et al): one singer accompanying himself on guitar was his own timekeeper.
Yeah. Blondie did this too, in Heart of Glass.
Another perhaps surprising candidate: The Allman Brothers’ Whipping Post starts out in 11/4 (or at least 3+3+3+2). Maybe that’s the other reason Zappa liked it. 
Not sure if this counts as popular, but Yes’s Perpetual Change goes all over the place. I’ve heard 4/4, 3/4, 14/4, and what I think is 10/4.
That’s a hard question to answer. I didn’t use to be able to do it. I always asked my dad (a guitarist) the same question when I was younger. Then when I took up the flute and started actually experiencing music firsthand, strong beats, weak beats, off beats, I discovered I was able to “feel” it. The strongest beat always comes at the beginning of a measure, and you count the beats till you feel the next strong one. In other words, I don’t really know how I do it, I jes do it.
DooWahDiddy
“We Can Work It Out” had me fooled then. (Must have been those triplets).
Okay, in order to redeem myself, here’s another Beatles’ song with a change in time signatures:
“Here Comes The Sun”. Most of the song is in 4/4 but the part that goes “Sun sun sun, here we come” is in 5/4.
The Pixies monkeyed with time signatures quite a bit, especially on Doolittle. “La La Love You” is in 5/4; “There Goes My Gun” alternates between 7/4 and 3/4 (which is badass).
And Frank Black (formerly Black Francis, of the abovementioned Pixies) messes around with time signatures on his solo albums now and then. “All My Ghosts,” on Frank Black and the Catholics, has a bridge that does the same thing twice in a row, except the first run-through is in 8/4, the second in 7/4. “Nadine,” on Show Me Your Tears, is a standard 12-bar blues, but the bars that would traditionally be numbers 10-12 are cut out, so it’s more of a 9-bar blues.
And the final verse of the song “I’ve Seen Your Picture,” on Dog in the Sand, is in some kind of madcap accelerating tempo, in which every few lines the bars shorten and he has to start cutting off his own lyrics to get to the next line. It’s amazing.
How about Cream’s White Room? It is in 5/4 time.
Only the intro, though.
It’s more complex than that. It starts with a bar of 2/4, then three bars of 3/8, one bar of 5/8, then a bar of 4/4. This pattern repeats a total of six times, first as an instrumental, then through the five repetitions of the “Sun, sun, sun” chorus, before resolving back to 4/4.
Another instance of shifting meters in Beatle music is “All You Need Is Love.” The verses go 4/4, 3/4, 4/4, 3/4, three bars of 4/4, 3/4, and repeat.
Yes, John Lennon threw in the occasional extra beat: both “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Across The Universe” have isolated bars of 5/4 in a 4/4 song.
I’m not sure whether it’s an odd pattern of rests or an odd time signature, but something strange is going in with k.d. lang’s “Watch Your Step Polka” from “Angel With a Lariat.” Anybody got a firm handle on that one?
Broken Social Scene’s recent single “7/4 (Shoreline)” is in - surprise, surprise - 7/4 time. Fantastic song.
“The Ocean” from that same album gets heavy airplay; it’s in 4-4-4-3. Someone - Bonzo, I hope - counts off the beat at the beginning for everyone, but his “one, two, three” actually takes six beats to count.
Done four already
but now we’re steady
and then they went:
one. two. three.
Dave Brubeck’s whole album “Time Out” was about unusual time signatures; there’s no song on it in straight 4/4. The Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom” is 4-4-4-2, 4-4-4-2-2. That last measure might be four but it sure feels like two and two! Last but not least, Nine Inch Nails “March of the Pigs” is in 6-6-6-7, with a bridge in 4/4.
For the denominator, short of knowing the original composer’s intention, you can’t.
And the original composer might not have written it down on paper, but played it on the guitar, and not been able to read music anyway.
The denominator of a time sig does not tell us the speed at which the composition is played (the tempo does that), but it is common convention nowdays to use a quarter note for moderate tempos and and eighth note for faster ones. Centuries ago, this was looser, and sigs sometimes had 16th or 32nds as their denominator, or even 1 (whole) or 2 (half note).
Since it is possible to express multiplications and divisions of any length of note (a whole note is twice the duration of a half, 4X that of a quarter, for example, regardless of tempo), theoretically it is possible to have a time sig of 4/32 with a tempo of Largo which would sound slower than a 4/1 in Presto, but this is more of an academic exercise. The only drawback to using a sig at the extreme end of either range is 1. it looks funny, 2. is unnecessary, and 3. you may run out of practical notes – if the sig is 4/64, you might need 128th notes to subdivide and that gets pretty stupid and hard to read.
The OP said “popular” songs, but Linda Ronstadt had one in 7/4 (or 7/something) called “Get Closer”.
I remember being taught that the “numerator” told you how many beats were in a measure, and the “denominator” told you what type of note counted as a beat.
That is, 3/4 time means that there are three beats per measure, each quarter note is equal to one full beat.