search: pop songs with weird time signatures and metric shifts

It's two bars of 14/8 (or four bars of 7/8), followed by a bar of 11/8, then a bar of 15/8, then I think it's either 16 or 17 -- the transition to the bridge confuses me

actually johnny's divisions make more sense

The vibe solo's in 4/4!

Steel drums, rather

right, but there's a weird extra bar going into it I think

I mean extra beat

Yes, that transition is very odd.

The Beatles' "Good Morning" is another fun one to count.

ten, isn't it?

No, it changes multiple times throughout the song. It's really wacky.

Devo has some weird ones in their day. Never was able to figure out the first half of "Jocko Homo" though I believe it's 7/4. Todd Rundgren also messed around a bit on "Izzat Love?"

Alan Myers from Devo rarely gets mentioned in 'great drummers' discussions but he was terrific. Even on "Freedom of Choice" they were still using a kit on almost all the tunes.

yeah and that drummer they brought in to replace him couldn't do the same things, they had to slow songs with trickier rhythms like "Satisfaction" or "Whip It" way down. though they're now touring with Josh Freese and from what I've seen he's really a very good drummer, but he plays Devo a little too straightforward. Alan was key to Q: Are We Not Men's success to me, the drumming really amplifies the nervous and skittish feeling of the songs.

Man, Rush's "Limelight" is great. I've heard it so many times but never tried to count it until now.

The Pinball Song can be counted like

4 3 4 3 4 4 3 3 4 4 3
4 4 4 3 4 4 4 5
14 bars of 4 followed by one bar of 2
4 3 4 3 4 4 4

But the ending makes it clear that it should actually be a division of 8.

A few Lennon's already mentioned, but Don't Let Me Down alternates 5/4 with 4/4. He uses that trick a few times

come to mention it, Here Comes the Sun has odd bars of 3/8 amid the 4/4

How about "Bubbles" by the Free Design, is it 15? The 'bridge' part is in 7, I think.

seems like 8/8 to me with some bars of 7 and some bars of 6

Intro:
8 8 8 7
8 8 8 7

Verse:
8 8 8 7
8 8 8 7
8 8

Chorus:
8 8 8 8
8 7 8 8
8 7 8 8

Bridge:
8 6 8 6
8 6 8 6
8 6 8 8 8

or if you like to add stuff together into needlessly large numbers...

16, 15, 16, 15
16, 15, 16, 15, 16
16, 16, 15, 16, 15, 16
14, 14, 14, 14, 14, .... then what? 16, 8? 24? silly.

Dionne Warwick's "Anyone Who Had a Heart": It goes from 3/8 to 2/4 to 4/4....in the first line.

This has been bugging me. Just sounds like straight 6/8 to me. I pulled out my Bacharach songbook and they notate it as alternating bars of 5/4 and 4/4 which is insane. You could easily count the whole thing as 3/8, but it also makes sense to do
6 3 6 6 6
6 3 6 6 6 and then straight 6/8 for the chorus

Re: 15, I meant I was hearing one less 16th note, counting it as 4/4, but after listening again that's not right. How do you count 8/8? ONE two three ONE two three ONE two?

one two three four five six seven eight. really fast in the case of bubbles.

I mean you could say it goes 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 but grouping it into bars of 8 beats fits better with where the downbeats are.

and I think when you write it out like that with eights, sevens and sixes, it helps visualize the structure better. My brain can't really parse a list of 16s and 15s. But with 8s and 7s I can see that they just cut the last bar of each phrase one beat short during the intro and verse, and then did the same thing with the second bar during the chorus phrases. just makes more sense to me that way but of course it's all arbitrary.

Ok, I was able to follow your notation--I was originally trying to count those 8ths as 16ths but it wasn't adding up. When I see 8 in the bottom of any notation I automatically think 'triplets'.

Heavy Vegetable - Song for Wesley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtgYvUpto4M

Short (1:16) but poppy song but counted out
4 4 4 4
5 5 5 5
6 6
11 13
4 4 4 4
5 5 5 6
11 14

Mario Rubalcaba (drums) does some kinda tricky things when the meter switches, always thought this was an odd song.

Ok, I was able to follow your notation--I was originally trying to count those 8ths as 16ths but it wasn't adding up. When I see 8 in the bottom of any notation I automatically think 'triplets'.

Yeah I think Bubbles is a good example of when it's necessary to count as /8. When the song starts off it sounds like it's in 4/4 and you could loop the first bar of the verse "blowin bubbles out of the window" and it would be in 4/4. But then when you get to the end of a line it's cut short a half beat which is why you need to count it in 8 or else you'd have a bar of only 3.5 beats.

Heavy Vegetable - Song for Wesley

cool song. I think the parts that you counted as 11, 13 and 14 could just be counted as 6 instead. It's just that there's a downbeat in a weird spot somewhere in the middle there.

I'm not a musician. Does either "Rikki, Don't Lose That Number" or John Cale's "Fear" fit? They always sounded rhythmically weird to me, or at least parts of them.

I just put on "Rikki" and counted 4 all the way through.

Plenty of syncopation on top of the basic beat, though, which is what I'm guessing you were hearing.

Man, Rush's "Limelight" is great. I've heard it so many times but never tried to count it until now.

OTM. On the first go, I count: Riff 1 in 4
Riff 2 in 7
Verses in 3 with one bar of 4 as a transition back to Riff 2
Chorus, part 1 ("Living in the limelight") in 3
Chorus, part 2 ("Put aside the alienation") in 4
Guitar solo first in 3, then in 4

The use of 7/4 for Riff 2 foreshadows the interplay between 3 and 4 in a way.

Chorus, part 2 ("Put aside the alienation") in 4

This begins on "Those who wish to be" obv

Actually, the first part of the guitar solo is more like 2 bars of 3, a bar of 2, and a bar of 4. It all adds up to a multiple of 3 so I simplified it that way but this is where the accents fall.

Queen - Bicycle Race.

The Stranglers had several too:

Golden Brown (3/4 - 4/4)
Nuclear Device (4/4 - 6/4 - 7/4)
Peasant In The Big Shitty (9/4)

I count Limelight's verse like this:

3 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 4 - 2 - 3 - 3 - 4(?)

But like you said it's a matter of grouping.

Yeah, yours is more precise.

I'm going to revise my pinball interpretation to:

8 6 8 6
8 8 6 6
8 8 6
8 8 8 6
8 8 8 10
14 bars of 8, one bar of 4
8 6 8 6
8 8 8 6

I count Limelight's verse like this:

3 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 4 - 2 - 3 - 3 - 4(?)

that's really cool. on paper there are 4 divisions of six, but the way it's played is just like you say. It sort of has a consistency and a symmetry despite the odd meter.

Listening again, I believe that last 4 in Limelight's verse is actually a 7/8. What a great song.

bob weir - "playing in the band" the entire song is in 10/4.
allman bros. - "whipping post" is in 11/8 for a few bars.

I love how Give It To Me by Timbaland has a single drum sample throughout, yet it shifts it (or crops it?) so that, further into the track, beat 1 of the bar occurs at a different part of the sample than it did in verse 1, which defeats your expectations in an exhilarating way.

Survivor's Eye Of The Tiger does a clever thing in the intro, dropping a beat so that the guitar chord triple whammy occurs a heartbeat earlier than it did the first time round, mimicing an expert boxer's unexpected (to his opponent) timing.

I'm not sure these are genuine "weird time signatures" or rather examples of odd beats being cut in order to "create interest". The I Should Be So Lucky example six years upthread is a good one - some weird triplet thing happens at "hand in hand I'm dreaming...", although it stays in 4/4.

Listening again, I believe that last 4 in Limelight's verse is actually a 7/8. What a great song.

I think you're right!

'Rockwrok' by Ultravox is mostly in 4/4, but the guitar solo section is in 7/4.

That's just 'missing a beat out' tho.

It's still a time signature change.

tru

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGSZKjTEaTs

This song is 4/4 but the "In the evidence of its brilliance" line she sings in 7/4, but around 3:48 she sings it on top of stuff that's being sung in 4/4 and it sounds kind of crazy.