E major · Camelot 12B · 85 BPM
Interstate Love Song
by Stone Temple Pilots
- 85
- BPM
- E major
- Key
- 12B
- Camelot
- 22
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
When "Interstate Love Song" hit number one on the US Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart on September 17, 1994, it replaced the band's own previous single, "Vasoline". The Stone Temple Pilots track then held the top spot for 15 weeks, a record at the time, and gave the group 17 consecutive weeks at number one. It also climbed to number two on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and matched that position in Iceland, while reaching number 20 in Canada.
The song began with bassist Robert DeLeo, who worked out the chords and melody in an Atlanta hotel room while the band toured their debut album Core. He brought it to rehearsals at Cole Rehearsal Studios in Hollywood in March 1992, having first conceived it as a bossa nova piece played on a cheap nylon string guitar. When he played it for singer Scott Weiland, the vocalist hummed along and turned what had been the intro melody into a chorus melody. The band cut the track during sessions for Purple at the Southern Tracks studio in Atlanta, and Weiland finished his vocals in a single take.
Weiland said the lyrics concerned the lies he told his girlfriend, Jannina, while making Purple. "She'd ask how I was doing, and I'd lie, say I was doing fine," he explained in his autobiography, Not Dead and Not For Sale. The music video, directed by Kevin Kerslake, gave its long-nosed protagonist a Pinocchio-style nose that grew throughout, reflecting the theme of lying.
Interstate Love Song runs at 85 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 2.82 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 706 ms. It is in E major, Camelot 12B, which shares its notes with C# minor and mixes cleanly with A major and B major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.