Tush
by ZZ Top
- 144
- BPM
- C minor
- Key
- 5A
- Camelot
- 58
- Danceability
- 10
- Acousticness
ZZ Top were in Florence, Alabama, playing a rodeo arena with a dirt floor, when "Tush" turned up. They decided to play a bit that afternoon. Billy Gibbons hit the opening lick, and lighting director Dave Blayney signaled them to keep going. Dusty Hill leaned over and asked what they would call it. Gibbons said "tush hog" came from a 1966 flip side by Texas singer Roy Head, and down South it meant deluxe. They had the riff and Hill fell in with the vocal. They wrote it in about three minutes. Hill remembered it as ten.
The song is a twelve-bar blues and was the only single from the band's fourth album, Fandango! Bill Ham produced, and Terry Manning recorded and mixed it. Gibbons liked the word's double meaning and called it secret blues language.
"Tush" closed the band's sets on many tours. After Hill died in 2021, ZZ Top first played it on July 30 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Gibbons put Hill's hat on the microphone and sang lead. From August 6 they ended concerts with a recording of Hill's last performance. When the 2021 tour finished, the song left the setlist. VH1 ranked it the 67th best hard rock song of all time.
Tush runs at 144 BPM, the tempo of dubstep and trap counted in half time, and hardstyle. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.67 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 417 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.