Db major · Camelot 3B · 89 BPM
Red Red Wine
by UB40
- 89
- BPM
- Db major
- Key
- 3B
- Camelot
- 86
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Neil Diamond wrote and recorded "Red Red Wine" in 1967, and it appeared on his second studio album, Just for You. The lyrics tell of a person who finds that drinking red wine is the only way to forget his woes. After Diamond left Bang Records in 1968, the label kept releasing his singles, and for this one it added a background choir without his involvement or permission. His version reached No. 62 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. Oddly, the 1968 single version has never been issued on a vinyl album or CD, and the 1996 box set In My Lifetime mislabeled its version as being from a Bang single when it was actually the original, non-overdubbed mono album master.
Other artists picked up the song quickly. Dutch singer Peter Tetteroo of Tee-Set had a hit with it in 1968, reaching No. 6 on the Dutch Top 40. In 1969, Jamaican-born singer Tony Tribe recorded a reggae version that reached No. 46 in the UK and became Trojan Records' first chart hit. Vic Dana's cover, from his album If I Never Knew Your Name, peaked at No. 72 in June 1970 and became his last Billboard Hot 100 hit.
UB40, an English reggae band formed in Birmingham in December 1978, recorded their version in 1983 for the album Labour of Love. It went to No. 1 in the UK and, after a rerelease in 1988, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The band sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
Red Red Wine runs at 89 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 2.7 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 674 ms. It is in Db major, Camelot 3B, which shares its notes with Bb minor and mixes cleanly with F# major and Ab major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.