My Sharona
by The Knack
- 144
- BPM
- G minor
- Key
- 6A
- Camelot
- 59
- Danceability
- 6
- Acousticness
The Knack had been a band in Los Angeles for about a year when Doug Fieger, then 25, met 17-year-old Sharona Alperin. The group had formed in 1978 around Fieger on vocals and rhythm guitar, Berton Averre on lead guitar, Prescott Niles on bass and Bruce Gary on drums. The meeting set off two months of feverish writing. "My Sharona" came out of it. Averre did not want her name in the song. Fieger wanted a direct expression of his feelings. Averre gave in.
Fieger claimed the song was written in 15 minutes and mixed in another 15, after the band recorded it in a single take, background vocals aside. Gary did not much like it when it was first played to the band. He still came up with the stuttering beat of tom-tom and snare and added a flam. He thought the flam was crucial. Fieger admitted that the drum rhythm was "just a rewrite" of "Going to a Go-Go" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Alperin posed for the single's picture sleeve holding a copy of Get the Knack.
Released in 1979, "My Sharona" spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped Billboard's year-end singles chart. It was Capitol Records' fastest gold debut single since "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1964. Fieger and Alperin were engaged at one point but never married.
My Sharona runs at 144 BPM, the tempo of dubstep and trap counted in half time, and hardstyle. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.67 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 417 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.