F# major · Camelot 2B · 99 BPM
When I Come Around
by Green Day
- 99
- BPM
- F# major
- Key
- 2B
- Camelot
- 54
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
Green Day had already been playing "When I Come Around" on stage for two years before it ever appeared on a record, with live performances dating back to 1992. The song found its home as the tenth track on Dookie, the band's third studio album, released in 1994. Reprise Records shipped it to radio that December and gave it a physical release as the album's fourth single in January 1995.
The single climbed to number six on the US Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart, matching "Wake Me Up When September Ends" as the band's second-highest entry there, behind only "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". It spent seven weeks at the top of the Modern Rock Tracks chart and reached number two on the Album Rock Tracks chart, while also landing in the top ten in Australia, Canada, Iceland, and New Zealand. By August 2010 it had sold 639,000 copies, making it the band's second best-selling single of the 1990s behind "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)".
Mark Kohr directed the music video, which followed the band walking at night through San Francisco and Berkeley, passing the Mission District, Broadway, and the BART Powell Street Station while interwoven scenes showed people going about everyday lives. Touring guitarist Jason White appeared alongside his girlfriend. Billie Joe Armstrong's simple horizontally-striped sweater in the clip was later credited on MTV's Ultimate Albums: Dookie special with starting a fashion trend for similar sweaters.
When I Come Around runs at 99 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.42 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 606 ms. It is in F# major, Camelot 2B, which shares its notes with Eb minor and mixes cleanly with B major and Db major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.