Heartache Tonight
by Eagles
- 113
- BPM
- A minor
- Key
- 8A
- Camelot
- 81
- Danceability
- 8
- Acousticness
The song started in a jam between Glenn Frey and JD Souther at Frey's home in Los Angeles. Souther dropped by whenever he was in town on tour. The two wrote the first verse while listening to Sam Cooke songs. In the heat of the jam Frey phoned Bob Seger and sang him the verse. Seger blurted out the chorus. He later said he took what Frey was singing about and jumped right in.
Frey had a line, "Somebody's gonna hurt somebody", and wanted to write a shuffle. Then he called Joe Walsh, who came down around one in the morning and came up with the bridge. Souther helped with lyrics the same night. Don Henley chimed in the next day and wrote many of the lyrics. Frey said it was meant to be a romp with no heavy lyrics.
The Eagles put it on The Long Run and released it as a single in 1979. Frey sang lead. It went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in November, their last song to do so, and was certified platinum. It won the 1979 Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
Heartache Tonight runs at 113 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.12 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 531 ms. It is in A minor, Camelot 8A, which shares its notes with C major and mixes cleanly with D minor and E minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.