G minor · Camelot 6A · 123 BPM
I Feel the Earth Move
by Carole King
- 123
- BPM
- G minor
- Key
- 6A
- Camelot
- 72
- Danceability
- 65
- Acousticness
Carole King sat down at the piano to write "I Feel the Earth Move," and the instrument she chose shaped everything about how the song turned out. She wrote and performed the track for her second studio album, Tapestry, released in 1971. Producer Lou Adler decided to highlight her piano playing in the mix, which gave the recording a different feel from the guitar-based singer-songwriter approach she had taken on her prior album, Writer. Critics later pointed to that piano-led groove, along with King's vocal delivery, as reasons for the song's success.
Ode Records picked the upbeat "I Feel the Earth Move" as the A-side of Tapestry's first single, paired with "It's Too Late" in a double A-sided release. The record reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart dated June 19, 1971, and stayed there for five consecutive weeks. It also peaked at number 6 on the UK Singles Chart. Airplay told a more complicated story, since disc jockeys and listeners came to prefer the slower, lamenting "It's Too Late," which eventually dominated. On the concurrent Cash Box chart, which still tracked both sides separately, "It's Too Late" spent four weeks at number 1 while "I Feel the Earth Move" did not chart at all.
Author James Perone noted a detail in the writing itself: the syncopated rhythm on the word "tumbling" placed the accent at the end rather than the beginning, producing what he called a musical equivalent of a tumble.
I Feel the Earth Move runs at 123 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.95 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 488 ms. It is in G minor, Camelot 6A, which shares its notes with Bb major and mixes cleanly with C minor and D minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.