20th Century Boy
by T. Rex
- 135
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 44
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Marc Bolan wrote "20th Century Boy" and took lines from famous people for the lyrics. The phrase "sting like a bee" came from one of Muhammad Ali's 1969 speeches. T. Rex recorded it on December 3, 1972 at Toshiba Recording Studios in Tokyo, in a session that ran from 3:00 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.
Tony Visconti was not there, possibly for the first time at a T. Rex session, so Bolan and Mick O'Halloran handled production. Visconti still received the credit. The backing vocals, hand claps, acoustic guitar and saxophones were added in England after the tour. The multi-track master shows the song ending in nearly three minutes of jamming, but the single faded out at three minutes and 39 seconds.
It was first considered as the closing track for Tanx. It came out instead as a stand-alone single on March 2, 1973, as the album appeared. It entered the UK chart at number 3 on March 10, stayed there three weeks and lasted nine weeks in all. It topped the chart in Ireland and, like most T. Rex singles, missed the US. In 1991 a Levi's commercial starring Brad Pitt sent it back to number 13 in the UK.
20th Century Boy runs at 135 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.78 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 444 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.