Clocks
by Coldplay
- 129
- BPM
- Ab major
- Key
- 4B
- Camelot
- 58
- Danceability
- 60
- Acousticness
Chris Martin came up with the piano riff for "Clocks" late one night in Liverpool, when he walked into the studio and developed it on piano. He later said Muse inspired it. Jonny Buckland added guitar chords, and Martin compared it to a chemical reaction.
Coldplay had written ten songs for A Rush of Blood to the Head and thought the album too close to finished for another. They labeled the demo "Songs for #3". In June 2002 Martin called the album "rubbish" and delayed its release. Manager Phil Harvey heard the demo and pushed him to rework it, pointing out that its lyrics about urgency contradicted shelving it. Harvey also came up with the outro and whistled the melody to Buckland, who could play what he could not. The band recorded the song quickly, and the album came out two months later.
Its American release as the second single came first, on November 11, 2002. It reached number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the UK it came out in March 2003 and reached number nine. The video was shot at the ExCeL building in London's Docklands, and Martin has maketradefair.com written on his hand. At the 2004 Grammy Awards it won Record of the Year.
Clocks runs at 129 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 1.86 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 465 ms. It is in Ab major, Camelot 4B, which shares its notes with F minor and mixes cleanly with Db major and Eb major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.