By the Way
by Red Hot Chili Peppers
- 123
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 46
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
In the summer of 2002, Red Hot Chili Peppers were about to put out their eighth studio album, and the first thing anyone heard from it was the title track, "By the Way", on June 24. The band had not picked it. Guitarist John Frusciante said the managers found it exciting and talked the band into it. They thought it joined the wild side of the group's sound to the melodic side. Anthony Kiedis called it an assault of non-commercialism. Its reception in the United Kingdom was shocking to him, and thrilling at the same time.
The song reached number two there, equaling the band's highest single in that country, and went to number one in Italy. At home it was their sixth number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and held the top of the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart for seven weeks.
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a couple who had made other videos for the band, directed the clip. It opens with Kiedis hailing a taxi at Echo Park Ave and Silver Lake Blvd. The driver is a fan who plays the single on the cab's CD player, lip-syncs it, and tears through Los Angeles while Kiedis pages Flea and Frusciante, who are at lunch. They chase the cab in Flea's Ford Bronco. The band has played the song more than 600 times since 2002, making it their fourth-most-performed.
By the Way runs at 123 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.95 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 488 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.