A minor · Camelot 8A · 96 BPM
Californication
by Red Hot Chili Peppers
- 96
- BPM
- A minor
- Key
- 8A
- Camelot
- 60
- Danceability
- 0
- Acousticness
In 1999, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released their seventh album, Californication, which closed with the title track. "Californication" arrived as a single in June 2000 and climbed to number one on both the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks charts. It also reached number 69 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 16 on the UK Singles Chart.
John Frusciante built the guitar part around a sparse blend of guitar and bass notes in the main riff, taking inspiration from "Carnage Visors" by The Cure. The song opens in A minor, with Frusciante picking Am and F chords for twelve measures before moving through C, G, F and Dm. The pre-chorus shifts to strummed Am and Fmaj7 chords, while the chorus uses C, Gmaj7, Dm9 and Am.
The music video, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, presented a fictional open world video game in which each band member went on an adventure through a California setting, particularly San Francisco and Los Angeles. The world came to an end when an earthquake ravaged it, and the avatars were replaced by the live action band. It became the group's most watched video on YouTube, officially reaching a billion views on December 5, 2022. In 2022, Spanish developer Miquel Camps Orteza created a playable game based on the video, with seven levels drawn from its scenes.
Californication runs at 96 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.5 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 625 ms. It is in A minor, Camelot 8A, which shares its notes with C major and mixes cleanly with D minor and E minor.
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