A major · Camelot 11B · 99 BPM
Lovely Day
by Bill Withers
- 99
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 70
- Danceability
- 20
- Acousticness
Clarence McDonald produced the 1977 recording of "Lovely Day" and arranged the track, playing keyboards on the session. Ray Parker Jr. handled guitars, Jerry Knight played bass, and Russ Kunkel sat behind the drums. The session belonged to American soul and R&B singer Bill Withers, who wrote the song with Skip Scarborough. Columbia Records put it out in 1977, and it appeared on Withers's sixth album, Menagerie.
The single, released in late 1977, reached number 6 on the US Billboard R&B chart and number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1978. In the United Kingdom it climbed to number seven on the Singles Chart. Toward the end of the recording, Withers holds a high E note for 18 seconds, the longest sustained note of any top 40 hit in the United States. Rolling Stone placed the song at number 402 on its "Top 500 Best Songs of All Time" list in 2021.
British audiences saw the song return to the charts more than once. The original version recharted at number 92 in 1987, and a remix by Ben Liebrand, called the "Sunshine Mix", reached number four the following year. The remix brought renewed attention to Withers's original, whose airplay surged into the early 1990s and eventually overshadowed Liebrand's version on the radio.
Lovely Day runs at 99 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.42 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 606 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.