Walking on the Moon
by The Police
- 145
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 64
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Sting wrote "Walking on the Moon" in a hotel room in Munich after a concert. He was drunk, slumped on the bed, when the riff came into his head. He walked around the room singing "Walking round the room", and in the morning he remembered and wrote the riff down. He thought that title was stupid and made up an even stupider one, "Walking on the Moon". In his autobiography he also tied it to his first real girlfriend, Deborah Anderson, and to walking back from her house.
The early versions were rockers before the song was reworked. Sting called the bass riff weird and jazzy. Guitarist Andy Summers came up with the chord that hits after the bass notes. The arrangement is sparse, centered on a three-note bass riff, and is one of the Police's more reggae-influenced songs.
It came out in late 1979 as the second single from Reggatta de Blanc, following "Message in a Bottle". It was the Police's second UK number one. It also reached number one in Ireland and number nine in Australia, but did not chart in the US. The B-side, "Visions of the Night", was written by Sting. Stewart Copeland said the song was too cerebral for early audiences. Sting called it "Three O'Clock Shit".
Walking on the Moon runs at 145 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 1.66 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 414 ms. It is in C major, Camelot 8B, which shares its notes with A minor and mixes cleanly with F major and G major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.