Ace of Spades
by Motörhead
- 144
- BPM
- F# major
- Key
- 2B
- Camelot
- 32
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Lemmy played the overdriven bass intro that opens "Ace of Spades". For the words, he used gambling metaphors drawn from cards and dice. He said he was really more into one-arm bandits, but a person cannot sing much about spinning fruit and wheels coming down.
Motörhead released it as a single in October 1980, ahead of the album of the same name and an autumn tour. Radio came first. On September 6, Lemmy was interviewed on BBC Radio 1's Rock on Saturday show, which played the song, and the band performed it on Top of the Pops on October 6 and 20. Bronze Records also pressed a 12 inch version in special Christmas picture sleeves, limited to 50,000 copies, with the band dressed as Santas in a photo taken at the Aylesbury Fair while on tour.
It spent 13 weeks in the UK Singles Chart and first peaked at number 15. After Lemmy died in December 2015, it reached number 13 on the official chart in January 2016 and topped the UK Rock and Metal Singles chart. Lemmy himself did not see it as the band's definitive song, and said so in 2000.
Ace of Spades runs at 144 BPM, the tempo of dubstep and trap counted in half time, and hardstyle. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.67 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 417 ms. It is in F# major, Camelot 2B, which shares its notes with Eb minor and mixes cleanly with B major and Db major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.