F major · Camelot 7B · 80 BPM
Don't Stop Me Now
by Queen
- 80
- BPM
- F major
- Key
- 7B
- Camelot
- 56
- Danceability
- 5
- Acousticness
Freddie Mercury wrote "Don't Stop Me Now" during the sessions for Queen's album Jazz, and the band recorded it in August 1978 at Super Bear Studios in Berre-les-Alpes, France. The arrangement built on Mercury's piano playing, with John Deacon and Roger Taylor laying down the bass and drums backing. The chorus lines carried Queen's trademark multitrack harmony vocals, and the lyrics reflected the band's feeling that they were getting better at having a good time. The track landed as the twelfth song on Jazz, which came out in 1978, and the single followed on 26 January 1979. It reached number 9 in the UK charts but only number 86 in the US, though it still picked up airplay on American album-oriented rock stations because the album itself was a top-10 hit.
Brian May was not originally a fan of the song. He felt it celebrated the hedonistic and risky lifestyle of Mercury, who at the time was, in May's words, taking lots of drugs and having sex with lots of men. Hearing it played at weddings, parties and funerals changed his mind, and he came to see it as representing great joy.
The video was directed by J. Kliebenstein and filmed at the Forest National in Brussels on the same day the single was released. Viewed at the time as one of the lesser songs in the Queen canon, it was performed live only during 1979, ending with the Crazy Tour, and a live version appeared on the album Live Killers.
Don't Stop Me Now runs at 80 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 750 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.