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April 25

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Songs With Swung Beats

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I'm trying to make a playlist of songs which are NOT in the jazz or swing genres, but which DO have a swung beat. My criteria are:

  • Massive hits (or TV/film themes) everyone will have heard of preferred to obscure tracks.
  • Nothing from before about 1960.
  • Nothing in the jazz or swing genres.
  • Very obviously swung beats, closer to a pure shuffle, and consistent through the song, are preferred to anything more complex. (An example of this is that I rejected The Lion Sleeps Tonight because it seems to me the rhythm varies between verse and chorus.)
  • Where an artist has embraced swing as a genre (Rod Stewart or Robbie Williams for example) their other works are still good for my list.
  • Within those criteria, the more eclectic the list the better.
  • I appreciate there are squillions of potential answers. But I only need 30 or so.

So, does anyone have any suggestions for a list that begins:

AndyJones (talk) 12:40, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you feel about David Bowie's Rebel Rebel? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 188.220.144.58 (talk) 17:48, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you can tolerate "The Hustle" by Van McCoy, it would probably qualify; as would "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!. --136.54.106.120 (talk) 02:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would this qualify?[1] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:53, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, some amazing music there, thank you! I especially loved the Bowie and the ELO. However I don't think any of the suggestions made so far belong on my playlist because, so far as I can count, I don't think any of them has a swung beat, which is my primary criterion. I'm not doing anything clever to assess them - just looking them up on YouTube then playing them while tapping out the rhythm with my finger on the corner of the desk. But I'm pretty confident none of them qualify. To verify I wasn't going mad I googled the sheet music for Rebel Rebel, and that shows it as not swung. AndyJones (talk) 18:27, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Or "swing". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:35, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have thought of a strategy for generating suggestions for my playlist. A foxtrot is generally danced to a swing beat, so if I go to the Wikipedia page for any season of Strictly Come Dancing (or presumably, by extension, of Dancing with the Stars) then check out what songs were used for foxtrots, rejecting any that don't fit my criteria, then that throws up some which are exactly what I'm looking for, and are not already on my radar. The first few I found by that method were:

And I'm still open to more suggestions from here. AndyJones (talk) 10:03, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Taers For Fears- Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Toto- Hold The Line
Alannah Myles- Black Velvet
George Thorogood and the Destroyers- Bad To The Bone
Robert Johnson- Cross Road Blues
Billy Ocean- When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going
Huey Lewis & The News- Stuck With You
Sara Bareilles- Love Song
Mariah Carey- Vision Of Love
Dropkick Murphys- I'm Shipping Up To Boston
The "Chili's baby back ribs" jingle
Brownsville Station- Smokin' In The Boys' Room
MC Hammer- Addams Groove
America- A Horse With No Name
Stevie Wonder- Higher Ground
Booker T & The MG's- Green Onions
Billy Joel- Tell Her About It
To name a few. 68.97.179.23 (talk) 14:55, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Brilliant! Thank you. AndyJones (talk) 12:28, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that's an amazing list, and really eclectic. If you care (although why should you?) the only ones from there that I rejected were Billy Joel (because I couldn't count it), Robert Johnson (really difficult to count, and failed my date parameters), and the Toto and the Mariah Carey because they both seem to me (who is no expert) to be more a slow blues than a swing, which is to say that the rhythm hits all 12 of the notes in a bar of 4 triplets (although the Toto one clearly more complicated than that). But I want them for when I make my slow blues playlist! AndyJones (talk) 17:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still trying to understand what a swung beat is. You mentioned that between the verse and chorus of The Lion Sleeps Tonight, one is swung and the other is not. Can you say which is which? And for some reason I thought of the rhythm of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's eponymous song, but the article about them says they are a swing band, so I guess that doesn't count. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:6CE6 (talk) 23:32, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In swing, you leave a gap between the main beat and the offbeat. There is a range of complexity, but at its simplest (sometimes called a "shuffle") start by imagining an 8-beat, which simply divides each of the four beats of the bar into two quavers, so there would be eight notes in each bar, evenly spaced:
1&2&3&4&

To swing it, instead divide each beat into triplets: 

1&a2&a3&a4&a

But then only play eight of those, the "a" and the main beat: 

1 a2 a3 a4 a

And then repeat that again and again throughout the song: 

1 a2 a3 a4 a1 a2 a3 a4 a1 a2 a3 a4 a1 a2 a3 a4 a

...and you've got a swing beat. Imagine that's what the drummer is playing on the hi-hat all the way through while she and the other musicians do their stuff. AndyJones (talk) 12:36, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Basic shuffle rhythm playⓘ

AndyJones (talk) 12:55, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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