Unlike other music websites, we at Meanspeed Music Research Labs, located in a remote undisclosed location in New Jersey, *work* with the songs we represent. We love to calibrate and find out what is really going on behind the pace of the music. For example, simply knowing that this song, Sweet Caroline, a song Neil wrote as a silent tribute to the daughter of teh 36th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. We legally purchase (that would mean: pay for) and download a song:
next, we use the methodology described on the site and enter the co-ordinates in a spreadsheet, as we did below:
next, we plot all 9 trials to create speed graph showing results in line form:
We take a look at all 9 trial in scatter graph form:
Finally, we synthesize this a speed chart:
Now we can enter the speed in the BPM column in iTunes and create the best playlists that money cannot buy:
speed summary, by James C.C. Manning and Hunter Newman
song=”Sweet Caroline”
performer=Neil Diamond
composer=Neil Diamond
total beats measured=3,690
time elapsed=28 minutes, 51 seconds
beats per trial=410
mean time per trial=3 minutes, 12.3 seconds
mean speed=127.9 beats per minute
mean emotion according to meanspeed music conjecture=victory
average beat=0.469 seconds
Ian Schneider
James C.C. Manning
Hunter Newman
April 29, 2008
From wikipedia.org, the People’s Free Encyclopedia
“Sweet Caroline” is a pop song written and performed by Neil Diamond and officially released on September 16th 1969 as a single,and was also included on later pressings of his Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show album. The song reached #4 on the Billboard chart and eventually went platinum for sales of one million singles.[1]
In the fall of 1969, Diamond performed “Sweet Caroline” on several television shows, including The Joey Bishop Show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and The Ed Sullivan Show. It later reached #8 on the UK singles chart in 1971.
It is also very popular at sporting events worldwide, usually sung by supporters of English football team Arsenal, but in North America, it has been the signature song played during Boston Red Sox games at Fenway Park. The tradition began when Amy Tobey, the club’s musical coordinator at that time, started playing it in 1998 at the request of a Red Sox employee who had become a father to a girl named Caroline.[2] Tobey continued to play it (usually in the middle of the 8th inning) when the team was winning and she felt the Red Sox would win.[3] Other sources deny that Amy played the song at the request of an employee and state that she played it because she liked the song and it was played at other sporting events and those crowds seemed to like it.[4] In 2002, new owner John W. Henry requested that the song be played at every home game. The sing-along gained fame in a sequence of the 2005 movie Fever Pitch.
The song is also sung during New York Rangers hockey games, New York Mets, Washington Nationals, San Jose Giants, University of Mississippi,Vanderbilt University baseball games, and Boston College and University of North Carolina sporting events.
In the karaoke and sing-along versions, the chorus has fans singing “Sweet Caroline…” with the fans imitating the music to “Oh, oh, oh! Good times never felt so good” followed by the chant of “So good, so good, so good!” The next line goes “I feel inclined…” with the “Oh, oh, oh!” tag repeated.
[edit] Covers
- In 1970, Anthony Armstrong took the song into the Top 40 of the country charts. In 1972, Bobby Womack took it into the Top 20 of the R&B charts. A number of other artists have recorded covers, including Andy Williams, Bobby Goldsboro, Elvis Presley, the Ventures, Ray Conniff, Boots Randolph, Frank Sinatra, Guster, and Waylon Jennings.
- In 1996 film, Beautiful Girls, Timothy Hutton leads a sing-along performance of the song in a bar.
- In Ireland, in December 2001, a dance version by Dustin the Turkey reached Number 1 in the singles charts, his last Number 1 hit to date. It was also covered by the punk music band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes on their Have a Ball. “Sweet Caroline” has also been covered by Reggae group Bunny Rugs & The Upsetters in 1974 on their album To Love Somebody.
- In September of 2004, Jimmy Buffett included “Sweet Caroline” in a medley with “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” during both of his Fenway Park shows (9/10/2004 and 9/12/2004) stating, “Never again will those songs be played together in one medley at Fenway Park.”
- Dave Matthews Band followed suit and performed “Sweet Caroline” at Fenway Park on Saturday, July 8, 2006, and again on Saturday, March 24, 2007, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, NV.
- During U2’s Popmart Tour, U2’s guitarist The Edge performed several karaoke versions of “Sweet Caroline”.
- The song was covered by The Railbenders, a Denver-based hard-country band on their 2003 release Segundo.
- Angelo Venuto recorded a techno version of the song.
- Bobby Darin performed the song live, but at a slower, more dramatic tempo. This cover is available on the HYENA DVD Bobby Darin- Seeing Is Believing.
According to the album literature of 1996’s In My Lifetime, Diamond came up with the famous A6 chord (used in the “…hands, touching hands” portion of the song) in the song in a hotel room one night.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?pid=4456&aid=5629
- ^ http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2005/08/21/a_diamond_note_unique_to_the_red_sox/
- ^ http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2005/05/29/another_mystery_of_the_diamond_explained_at_last
- ^ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4930465
