Supertramp’s Breakfast In America is graceful as “refined, effortless manner.” By lyrics, this song is abstraction. In repeat verses we are told about a girlfriend who doesn’t give much away, and then poetic visions of the United States in the ideal, with every Texan a millionaire, the women in California the most stunning on earth. In a verse out of nowhere, we are told that the singer, singing in the character of a child just the verse before is a sinner who is offering autographs.
It’s the lyrical expression and the musical expression that make the song such an archetype grace song. The song is sung with infectious humility and curiosity and innocence. The chord pattern is laid down in an almost staccato, fun manner, again suggesting an innocent child finding new harmonies on the piano. I hear it as though no matter what the lyrics were, in other words, if one could not even understand a word of the song, the fun humble innocence of the song would still come through.
Supertramp is able to convey a childlike innocent curiosity about the millionaires in Texas with whom they were going to hob-knob. (I think “Dallas” was the #1 US television show when this song came out).
SO:
HOW IS ALL OF THIS DONE???? without sounding, well, like Sesame Street, or a Kenny G Christmas for people who love extra sweet ballads? By playing in C minor instead of C major. There it is.
I personally have always enjoyed this song a lot, especially for the originality in the simplicity, a la Bruce Springsteen or Paul Simon. It was a high school album for me and I remember this song as pure fun then and I still hear it that way now. This was not the most of the three huge singles from this album –‘The Logical Song,’ Take The Long Way Home,’ and ‘Goodbye Stranger’ were also very well known. I like the cheeky attitude of it.
The overall speed of the song stays the same—a linear trend line through performance shows that the song undergoes no change over the entirety. So said, it is an interesting “live in studio” performance with five major sections of the song that bubble up between 74-76 beats per minute, each with break in between that slow as far as 69 and 70 beats per minute. The trend—stays away from the mean speed at the time, keep from getting too ceremonial and austere by not going down below 69. The breaks are pronounced and they help turn the song into a short story.
mean speed/objective tempo=74.1 beats per minute
mean emotion according the the meanspeed music conjecture=grace
beat frequency=1.235 beats per second
mean space=0.810 seconds between beats
mean space=3.239 seconds between measures
mean slow phase=1.235 cycles per second
mean pitch=316.16 Hertz, 27 cents above D#4/Eb4=311.127 Hertz, and 73 cents below E4=329.628 Hertz.
