Pump It Up
by Elvis Costello
- 136
- BPM
- E major
- Key
- 12B
- Camelot
- 65
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
Elvis Costello and the Attractions cut "Pump It Up" in a single afternoon. Bassist Bruce Thomas said they did the best tracks on This Year's Model that way, including "Pump It Up" and "Chelsea". They went in, played them and that was it, like Motown. It was the first album Costello made with the Attractions.
He wrote it as a satire of the Stiffs Live Tour. The tour had been known for debauchery. Ian Dury's "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" was the official closing song of the tour setlist. Costello said the lyrics went against the grain of hedonism. Musically it took a lot from Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues". Thomas described his bass part as a hybrid of a riff from the Everly Brothers' "The Price of Love", with the notes changed to those of Richard Hell and the Voidoids' "You Gotta Lose", plus one odd bar of "You Really Got Me". He called it organic sampling. Steve Nieve played the organ.
Released as the second single from the album, after "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea", it reached number 24 in the UK and number 55 in Australia. The B-side was "Big Tears", with Mick Jones of the Clash on guitar. Paul Flattery directed the video, shot with a fisheye lens, and Costello walked on his ankles in it.
Pump It Up runs at 136 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 441 ms. It is in E major, Camelot 12B, which shares its notes with C# minor and mixes cleanly with A major and B major.
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