Bad to the Bone
by George Thorogood & The Destroyers
- 74
- BPM
- G minor
- Key
- 6A
- Camelot
- 46
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
"Bad to the Bone" was not a hit single when it came out. It was released on September 17, 1982, and peaked at number 27 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. MTV, launched a year earlier, kept playing the video. It shows George Thorogood walking into a pool hall to challenge Bo Diddley, with pool player Willie Mosconi betting on Diddley. As it ends, Thorogood leaves the 8-ball at the edge of a pocket, flicks cigar ash on the floor, and the ball drops. The song became a staple of classic rock radio. In April 2025 the BPI certified it silver.
Thorogood wrote it over a few months on the 50/50 tour. In his neighborhood the word "bad" was slang like "hip", and a man there always said "bad to death". The stutter in the chorus came from Roger Daltrey in "My Generation" and from Bachman Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet". He first wanted Muddy Waters to record it, but Waters' manager declined, and Bo Diddley had no recording deal. The hook and lyrics are adapted from Waters' "Mannish Boy".
The band recorded it in April 1982 at Dimension Sound Studios in Boston, where Rolling Stones keyboardist Ian Stewart played piano.
Bad to the Bone runs at 74 BPM, the tempo of soul, trip-hop and half-time hip-hop. In classical terms it sits in largo territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.24 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 811 ms. It is in G minor, Camelot 6A, which shares its notes with Bb major and mixes cleanly with C minor and D minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.