The Logical Song
by Supertramp
- 119
- BPM
- C minor
- Key
- 5A
- Camelot
- 63
- Danceability
- 52
- Acousticness
Roger Hodgson wrote most of "The Logical Song." He drew the lyrics from the ten years he spent at boarding school. It was personal to him. He worked on it during soundchecks and had finished the lyrics and arrangement six months before he proposed it to the band for the album.
The Supertramp single came out in March 1979 as the lead single from Breakfast in America. The main instrument is a Wurlitzer electric piano fed through a Boss CE-1 chorus pedal. The chorus has an Elka Rhapsody 610 string synthesizer, also run through the CE-1, and an Oberheim Four Voice synthesizer. One of the sound effects came from Mattel Electronics' Football handheld game, popular at the time. Hodgson has said the song came from his questions about what really matters in life, and that its burning question is "please tell me who I am." In 1980 he received the Ivor Novello Award for it, named the best song both musically and lyrically.
It was Supertramp's biggest hit, rising to No. 7 in the United Kingdom and No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Canada it spent two weeks at No. 1 and was the top song of the year. Scooter's cover returned it to the top 10 in several European countries in 2001.
The Logical Song runs at 119 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.02 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 504 ms. It is in C minor, Camelot 5A, which shares its notes with Eb major and mixes cleanly with F minor and G minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.