Burnin' for You
by Blue Öyster Cult
- 136
- BPM
- A minor
- Key
- 8A
- Camelot
- 54
- Danceability
- 11
- Acousticness
Buck Dharma wrote his parts of "Burnin' for You" in his garage studio. It was around 1980, and Blue Öyster Cult had moved to Connecticut. The words came from rock critic Richard Meltzer, who typed lyrics that looked like poetry on the page, with lots of lower case and free association. Dharma said it was one of Richard's more sentimental lyrics, something he was not known for.
Dharma had meant to keep the song for his 1982 solo debut, Flat Out. Manager Sandy Pearlman persuaded him to give it to the band. Roeser sang lead, as he had on "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" in 1976 in place of the usual lead vocalist, Eric Bloom.
It was the lead single from the band's eighth studio album, Fire of Unknown Origin, released in June 1981, where it was the second track. A popular early MTV music video helped it. It reached No. 1 on Billboard's new Top Tracks chart, now Mainstream Rock Songs, for two weeks, starting with the chart dated August 22, 1981, and it peaked at No. 40 on the Hot 100.
Burnin' for You runs at 136 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 441 ms. It is in A minor, Camelot 8A, which shares its notes with C major and mixes cleanly with D minor and E minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.