Welcome to the Black Parade
by My Chemical Romance
- 192
- BPM
- G major
- Key
- 9B
- Camelot
- 22
- Danceability
- 0
- Acousticness
My Chemical Romance began The Black Parade at S.I.R. Studios in New York in early 2006. "Welcome to the Black Parade" was the hardest song to finish. Gerard Way said pressure was tearing the band up. He was recovering from a break-up with his girlfriend of six years. By his own account, the song nearly got cut. It dated back to 2001, when it was called "The Five of Us Are Dying".
What changed things was a piano line from producer Rob Cavallo, originally meant as the album's introduction, which the band attached to the start of the song. Cavallo said it was the best thing he had ever heard. The band then finished the song. They recorded the final version at Eldorado Recording Studios.
The band played it live on television for the first time at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards on August 31 and put it on Myspace two days later. It went to radio on September 12 as the album's lead single, though some at the label wanted "Famous Last Words" or "Teenagers" instead. Samuel Bayer directed the video. It was the band's only number one on the UK singles chart and its biggest song on the Billboard Hot 100.
Welcome to the Black Parade runs at 192 BPM, the tempo of speedcore, blast-beat metal and very fast hardcore. In classical terms it sits in presto territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.25 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 313 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.