I'd Love to Change the World
by Ten Years After
- 117
- BPM
- A minor
- Key
- 8A
- Camelot
- 39
- Danceability
- 21
- Acousticness
In 1971 the British blues rock band Ten Years After released the album A Space in Time. Its lead single was "I'd Love to Change the World". Alvin Lee wrote and sang it, setting the melody over a folk-inspired chord pattern. The lyrics ran through a long list of societal complaints and the confused state of the world before they finally reached the Vietnam War.
The single peaked at number 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year. It was the band's highest charting single and their only US Top 40 hit. In Canada it went into the top ten. On release it was a staple of both FM and AM radio, a rarity for the time.
The song also turned up far from the radio. It appeared in films including Fahrenheit 9/11, Tropic Thunder and Apollo 11, and in television episodes of My Name Is Earl, Person of Interest and The Blacklist. In Greece, the telecommunications company Cosmote used it in commercials from 2009 until 2012. It was also in the trailer for Death by Lightning, a 2025 historical drama produced by Netflix.
I'd Love to Change the World runs at 117 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.05 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 513 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.