Rockin' in the Free World
by Neil Young
- 131
- BPM
- E minor
- Key
- 9A
- Camelot
- 50
- Danceability
- 0
- Acousticness
Neil Young was on tour with his band the Restless in February 1989 when word came that a planned concert tour of the Soviet Union would not happen. His guitarist, Frank "Poncho" Sampedro, said they would have to keep on rockin' in the free world. The phrase stuck with Young as a hook for a song about the turmoil in the world. He had the lyrics the next day. "Rockin' in the Free World" was first played live on February 21, 1989, in Seattle, with the band not having rehearsed it.
The words take on the first month of the George H. W. Bush administration. They quote the "thousand points of light" line from the inaugural address and the campaign promise of a "kinder, gentler nation". They also refer to Ayatollah Khomeini calling the United States the "Great Satan" and to Jesse Jackson's slogan "Keep hope alive". Two versions bookend the album Freedom, one mostly acoustic and one mostly electric. The song reached number 2 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
In September 1989 Young played it on Saturday Night Live. He lifted weights and did calisthenics with his trainer beforehand to raise his energy to where it normally stood after more than an hour onstage. Dennis Miller later called it the greatest performance in the show's history.
Rockin' in the Free World runs at 131 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.83 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 458 ms. It is in E minor, Camelot 9A, which shares its notes with G major and mixes cleanly with A minor and B minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.