We're an American Band
by Grand Funk Railroad
- 129
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 64
- Danceability
- 12
- Acousticness
Don Brewer, the drummer of Grand Funk Railroad, wrote "We're an American Band." Todd Rundgren produced it. It came out on July 2, 1973, from the album of the same name. It became the band's first single to top the Billboard charts.
Brewer said in a 2023 interview that he wrote the song to bring the band more hits, at a time when FM radio stations were turning toward singles. It stitches together snippets of events from the band's touring life. Grand Funk had toured before with the British band Humble Pie. Brewer said the song was not a rebuke of them.
The group had formed in Flint, Michigan, in 1969, with Mark Farner on vocals and guitar, Brewer on drums and Mel Schacher on bass. Between their recording debut in 1969 and their first breakup in 1976 they released six Platinum and seven Gold-certified albums. VH1 put the song at number 99 on its list of the 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs.
We're an American Band runs at 129 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.86 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 465 ms. It is in G major, Camelot 9B, which shares its notes with E minor and mixes cleanly with C major and D major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.