Can't Stop
by Red Hot Chili Peppers
- 92
- BPM
- E minor
- Key
- 9A
- Camelot
- 62
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
John Frusciante's guitar carries "Can't Stop" by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Through the bridge he plays sparsely in a reggae style, strumming only on the up-beat. After it he kicks on a Big Muff Pi fuzz by Electro-Harmonix for his solo and makes extensive use of a tone-bend.
Anthony Kiedis wrote the lyrics to an established rhythm. The band only occasionally did that, reversing the usual order of rhythm built around words. His verses name the band Defunkt ("the pistol that you pay for") and the tree-sitting activist Julia Butterfly Hill. In the bridge he admits he had forgotten his own philosophy and leans on a new girlfriend to get back on his feet.
The song came out on February 3, 2003, as the third single from By the Way. It was the band's eighth number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, where it stayed three weeks, and it reached number 57 on the Hot 100. In the video, directed by Mark Romanek and inspired by the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, Frusciante plays a silver Stratocaster and an orange Toronado, newer guitars than the vintage ones he favored. Romanek asked for them because they matched the color scheme. Frusciante also made the alternate mix used for the single, with the bass, backing vocals and handclaps turned up.
Can't Stop runs at 92 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.61 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 652 ms. It is in E minor, Camelot 9A, which shares its notes with G major and mixes cleanly with A minor and B minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.