Beds Are Burning
by Midnight Oil
- 117
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 76
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
In 1986, Midnight Oil toured the Outback, playing to remote Aboriginal communities and seeing for themselves how serious the problems in health and living standards were. Out of that trip, Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie and Rob Hirst wrote "Beds Are Burning", a criticism of how Aboriginal people were often removed from their lands, summed up in the pre-chorus line "it belongs to them, let's give it back". Garrett remarked, "Who would have thought an Aboriginal land rights song would travel that far?"
The words name places and details, such as the Kintore Ranges, the town of Yuendumu, Holden vehicles, the "It's Time" slogan and "the fair go". Hirst said the band were determined to be seen as an Australian band and to put place names and specifics in all their songs.
It was the first track on the 1987 album Diesel and Dust and the second single from it. It reached No. 1 in New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, No. 6 in Australia and No. 17 in the US. Midnight Oil played it at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics without permission from the IOC, because of its political message.
Beds Are Burning runs at 117 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.05 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 513 ms. It is in C major, Camelot 8B, which shares its notes with A minor and mixes cleanly with F major and G major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.