Ain't No Rest for the Wicked
by Cage the Elephant
- 76
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 64
- Danceability
- 5
- Acousticness
Matt Shultz was working as a plumber when he wrote the lyrics to "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked". He was at the house of an old co-worker who was then a drug dealer. He scribbled the words on a piece of drywall he found there. He had asked the man why he dealt drugs. The answer was that there was no rest for the wicked.
The song turns that exchange into three scenes. A narrator meets a prostitute who asks if he wants company for the night, and he asks why she does it. Her answer fills the chorus: money does not grow on trees, there are bills to pay and mouths to feed. Less than fifteen minutes later a criminal holds him at gunpoint, and the narrator asks the same question and gets the same reply. At home, he turns on the television and sees a preacher arrested for stealing church funds, which leads to a last chorus saying everyone is the same and gets no rest until closing their eyes for good.
Cage the Elephant released it on CD on June 16, 2008, through Relentless Records, as its third single. It became the band's first Top 40 hit in the UK. D.A.R.Y.L of Pulse Films directed the video. A re-release in North America the next year reached number 92 on the Hot 100, number three on the Alternative Songs chart and number eight on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked runs at 76 BPM, the tempo of soul, trip-hop and half-time hip-hop. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.16 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 789 ms. It is in G major, Camelot 9B, which shares its notes with E minor and mixes cleanly with C major and D major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.