Sam asked, "a white boy wrote a song like that?" #12/500 On Rolling Stone's Top 500 of All Time, "A Change Is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke, speed=57.6 bpm

The song that comes in at #12 of 500 of Rolling Stone's Greatest of All Time is "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke.

We measured the song for speed in 8 trials, each of which is shown in the chart above.

number of beats counted=154
mean time=2 minutes, 40.5 seconds
meanspeed=57.6
meanspace=1042 milliseconds per beat
meanemotion=melodrama.

I found the history of this song to be notable. From Rolling Stone Magazine ®:

"In 1963, Sam Cooke -- America's first great soul singer and one of the most successful pop acts in the nation, with eighteen Top Thirty hits since 1957 -- heard a song that profoundly inspired and disturbed him: Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." What struck Cooke was the challenge implicit in Dylan's anthem. "Jeez," Cooke mused at the time, "a white boy writing a song like that?"the article is continued at the Stone's own http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6595857/a_change_is_gonna_come.


Ian Schneider
meanspeed.com
May 13, 2007