D minor · Camelot 7A · 111 BPM
Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?
by Rod Stewart
- 111
- BPM
- D minor
- Key
- 7A
- Camelot
- 72
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
"Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" grew out of a jam between Rod Stewart, drummer Carmine Appice, and keyboardist Duane Hitchings. Appice described it as the story of a guy meeting a woman in a club, tracing the nervous dance-floor encounter from first glance through to the morning after. Hitchings later called it a spoof on the "cocaine lounge lizards" of the Saturday Night Fever era, recalling that the rock musicians of the day feared for their careers when disco arrived. Stewart, in Hitchings's view, made a smart move by poking fun at the genre rather than fighting it.
The single came out in November 1978 as the lead release from Blondes Have More Fun. It spent a week at number one in the UK that December, then four weeks atop the US Billboard Hot 100 in February 1979, and also led the charts in Canada and Australia. Guitarist Jim Cregan credited much of the record's success to Phil Chen's bass pattern, saying the whole song fell into place once it was played.
Not everyone was convinced of its originality. Jorge Ben Jor brought a copyright claim over the chorus, arguing it came from his song "Taj Mahal", which Stewart had heard at the Rio Carnival in 1978. The case was settled amicably in Ben Jor's favor, and the single's royalties went to UNICEF. Stewart also admitted borrowing the synthesizer riff from a Bobby Womack arrangement.
Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? runs at 111 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.16 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 541 ms. It is in D minor, Camelot 7A, which shares its notes with F major and mixes cleanly with G minor and A minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.