Should I Stay or Should I Go
by The Clash
- 113
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 75
- Danceability
- 8
- Acousticness
In 1991, nearly a decade after it first came out, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" reached number one in the UK. A Levi's jeans commercial had brought it back, and the re-release on February 18, 1991 made it the Clash's only UK number-one single. The band had long turned down offers from companies like Dr Pepper and British Telecom, but left the Levi's decision to Mick Jones, the main songwriter. He approved it, reasoning that jeans had been part of rock culture. He also added Big Audio Dynamite II's "Rush" to the re-release to promote his newer band.
The original release came in 1982 as a double A-side with "Straight to Hell". It reached number 17 in the UK. In the US the edition with "First Night Back in London" reached number 45 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Jones wrote it in 1981 for Combat Rock and sang lead. Its melody and chords resembled "Little Latin Lupe Lu". Rumors tied the lyrics to his leaving the band or to his relationship with the singer Ellen Foley, but he said in 1991 that it was not about anybody specific. Joe Strummer and Joe Ely sang the Spanish backing vocals. The tape operator Eddie Garcia had his Ecuadorian mother translate the lyrics over the phone. The Spanish is Ecuadorian.
Should I Stay or Should I Go runs at 113 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.12 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 531 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.