C major · Camelot 8B · 125 BPM
When You're Gone
by Bryan Adams
- 125
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 55
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Bryan Adams recorded "When You're Gone" at the Warehouse Studio in Vancouver between June and August 1998, with Bob Rock producing alongside him. The duet nearly had a different voice on it. Adams wanted Sheryl Crow to sing the female part but never heard back from her. His luck changed in August 1998, when he ran into Melanie C in a hotel elevator in Los Angeles and asked her on the spot to appear on the track. The two had first met back in 1996 on Top of the Pops, during the Spice Girls' performance of "Wannabe". Kennedy recorded Melanie C's vocals and sent them over to the Canadian studio to be worked into the mix.
Written by Adams and Eliot Kennedy, the pop and soft rock duet became the second single from Adams' album On a Day Like Today, released by A&M Records on November 30, 1998. It also marked Melanie C's first single outside the Spice Girls. The song reached number three on the UK Singles Chart and spent 15 weeks there, later earning double platinum certification from the BPI.
A music video directed by Marcus Nispel showed the pair running around a house. Adams revisited the song twice more, once with Pamela Anderson on his 2005 compilation Anthology, a duet that took five phone calls to arrange because she initially believed she was being Punk'd, and again with Melanie C on the 2022 re-recordings album Classic Pt II.
When You're Gone runs at 125 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 1.92 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 480 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.