F# major · Camelot 2B · 89 BPM
The Boys of Summer
by Don Henley
- 89
- BPM
- F# major
- Key
- 2B
- Camelot
- 53
- Danceability
- 55
- Acousticness
After the Eagles disbanded in 1980, Don Henley pursued a solo career, releasing his debut album I Can't Stand Still in 1982. Work on his second solo record, Building the Perfect Beast, brought him a demo from Mike Campbell, guitarist with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Campbell had built the track while experimenting with a LinnDrum drum machine and an Oberheim Xpander synthesizer, but Tom Petty felt it did not fit the album the Heartbreakers were making, Southern Accents. At the suggestion of producer Jimmy Iovine, Campbell played it for Henley, who wrote the lyrics and recorded vocals. The pair re-recorded the song after Henley decided to change the key.
Released on October 26, 1984, as the lead single from Building the Perfect Beast, "The Boys of Summer" reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart for five weeks. It hit number 12 in the United Kingdom, Henley's most successful hit there. In 1986 he won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for it.
The lyrics concern aging and the passing of youth. Henley explained the "Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac" line as an example of his generation selling out, inspired by a Grateful Dead bumper sticker he saw on a Cadillac Seville passing him on the San Diego Freeway. The title came from Roger Kahn's 1972 book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, itself taken from a Dylan Thomas poem.
The Boys of Summer 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 F# major, Camelot 2B, which shares its notes with Eb minor and mixes cleanly with B major and Db major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.