F# minor · Camelot 11A · 152 BPM
What the Hell
by Avril Lavigne
- 152
- BPM
- F# minor
- Key
- 11A
- Camelot
- 58
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Avril Lavigne wrote "What the Hell" with its producers, Max Martin and Shellback, recording it at Maratone Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the second song the three had written together, following Miranda Cosgrove's "Dancing Crazy". The track appeared on Lavigne's fourth album, Goodbye Lullaby, and RCA Records released it as the lead single on January 10, 2011. In November 2010, Lavigne had announced on her official website blog that the album had been finished for a year, blaming her record company for the delays, and revealed that "What the Hell" would be its first single.
Lavigne premiered the song on 31 December 2010 during a pre-taped segment on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, where she also performed "Girlfriend". She called it "a really fun, upbeat party song" and said it worked well to debut on the New Year's broadcast. The following day, the track was available as a free download for 48 hours from her Facebook page. Commercially it reached number one in Japan and charted highly across Asia, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Mexico.
The song carried lyrics about personal freedom and self-expression, backed by guitars, keyboards, and hand-claps. Lavigne described it as her "most pop track on the record" and the least personal song on the album. A music video directed by Marcus Raboy premiered on 23 January, and she added the song to the setlist of her Black Star Tour in 2011.
What the Hell runs at 152 BPM, the tempo of hard techno, punk and fast rock. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.58 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 395 ms. It is in F# minor, Camelot 11A, which shares its notes with A major and mixes cleanly with B minor and C# minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.