Epic
by Faith No More
- 174
- BPM
- E minor
- Key
- 9A
- Camelot
- 36
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
Not long after "Epic" came out in 1990, animal rights activists attacked its video for a fish seen flailing out of water. The band joked that the fish belonged to Björk, then the singer of the Sugarcubes, and that they had stolen it from her at a party. Björk said she had given it to keyboardist Roddy Bottum and defended the group. Director Ralph Ziman confirmed in 2010 that several fish were used, none of them out of water for long, and that all were released after filming.
Faith No More had not expected much from the song. Bassist Billy Gould said it began as a riff worked out in rehearsal between himself, Bottum and drummer Mike Bordin. When the first single from The Real Thing, "From Out of Nowhere", performed poorly, the label's hopes were low and it let the band choose the next video. They chose "Epic" because it felt the most natural.
It was released as the album's second single in the United States and Europe and became their breakthrough. It peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two in New Zealand, and it spent three weeks at number one in Australia. A Swedish-language cover by Just D and Clawfinger appeared on a promo CD in 1992.
Epic runs at 174 BPM, the tempo of drum and bass and jungle. In classical terms it sits in vivace territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.38 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 345 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.