F major · Camelot 7B · 77 BPM
Complicated
by Avril Lavigne
- 77
- BPM
- F major
- Key
- 7B
- Camelot
- 59
- Danceability
- 6
- Acousticness
Lauren Christy of the production team the Matrix recalled that the group had been listening to Avril Lavigne's early songs and heard "a Faith Hill kind of vibe" in them. When Lavigne walked into their studio, the trio felt her musical direction clashed with her image, but after an hour of conversation she told them she wanted songs with punk rock inclinations. They asked her to return the next day, and that afternoon they wrote what became "Complicated", along with another track called "Falling Down".
The Matrix presented basic chords, and Lavigne asked for the words "complicated" and "frustrated" in the lyrics. She and Christy then wrote the bulk of the words together under a tree, with the whole session captured on a RadioShack MC-60 microcassette. A&R executive Josh Sarubin, who had signed Lavigne, heard the result and knew it suited her. L.A. Reid agreed and set "Complicated" as the lead single from Let Go, released on 11 March 2002 by Arista Records.
The timing mattered. Lavigne had spent a frustrating year in New York after signing to Arista, writing songs the label did not warm to, and she had refused material pitched to her by outside writers because she wanted to write her own. The song she made with the Matrix reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and later earned Grammy nominations for Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Complicated runs at 77 BPM, the tempo of soul, trip-hop and half-time hip-hop. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.12 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 779 ms. It is in F major, Camelot 7B, which shares its notes with D minor and mixes cleanly with Bb major and C major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.