Pardon Me
by Incubus
- 152
- BPM
- C# minor
- Key
- 12A
- Camelot
- 58
- Danceability
- 0
- Acousticness
Brandon Boyd wrote "Pardon Me" after he saw a photo in an old Life magazine in a bookstore. It showed what the article called spontaneous human combustion. An old man's legs and shoes were intact, and around the knee there was only a pile of charred ashes. Boyd was in turmoil at the time. He had come back from tour to learn that his girlfriend of seven years had left him and that his grandmother and a close friend had died.
Incubus released it on October 5, 1999, as the lead single from Make Yourself. It was the band's first song to get considerable radio airplay. It reached No. 3 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and No. 7 on Mainstream Rock Tracks.
Steven Murashige directed the video, which premiered on The Box in the week ending January 16, 2000. Boyd and his father Charles stand at opposite ends of a hallway. As they walk toward each other, Charles grows younger and Boyd grows older, until they pass through each other and continue in opposite directions. Cutaways show the band in white outfits in a red box, and in red outfits surrounded by businesspeople.
Pardon Me runs at 152 BPM, the tempo of hard techno, punk and fast rock. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.58 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 395 ms. It is in C# minor, Camelot 12A, which shares its notes with E major and mixes cleanly with F# minor and Ab minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.