Meanspeed® Music Review

This holiday season, again I was taken with a song by Five for Fighting. As with their Disney “100 Years” use and my attention thereto on the commercial first, then the recording.

This Christmas season I did not have much money. The MACY’S use of the song world, a song a an absolutely static, as per the slope of the linear trend of the song, as The five fighters played *right on* the invisible click track. At home, I continued to hear the Fighters’ song day after day, and truthfully, I found it a bummer. I thought: this is either a song at 76 beats per minute and it is showing me that I am whining, or this is a whining song at ~80 beats per minute and I was being graceful in analyzing it. I have nothing near ‘perfect tempo’ and I kept this game going – I continued to ask people, “Do you hear this song as miserable or graceful? Is it realistically confident or spaced out and alone?” Turns out to be a song right inside the territory of loneliness, solitude and melancholy, which was a relief to me. I mean, it’s ok if *you* do not have enough money for all the gifts you want as long as that melancholy is confined to you. That is what I think about Ondrasik and Five for Fighting here: they are expressing miserable solitude warning us to “be careful what you wish for” is recorded at the speed making me feel inferior, until I realized that the song was a whining song. The elements of the MACY’S commercial had an effect on me, I learned the speed of the song and now I am mentally back in control. Life is much easier when you learn this truth. I spent no time wasting, “Is it John’s piano playing?/Is it the vocal delivery/Is it the cheesy theme” making me uncomfortable. As soon as I saw 79 beats per minute, it was: IT’S SPEED. DUH.

Wikipedia.org had a hard time classifying the tempo of the MACY’S song of consumerism:
“World” is the second single from the album Two Lights, written by Five for Fighting and released in 2006.

“World” is a wistfully upbeat, piano-driven melody that, like his other singles, paints vivid pictures of human life driven with deep emotion. The song’s lyrics are notably more cryptic than in previous singles, but are driven by the chorus hooks, “What kind of world do you want?” and “Be careful what you wish for, history starts now.”

Music video

The music video for “World” features aspects of the bright side of life including children, marriage and fireworks. There are also references that go with the lyrics including a brief image of a mushroom cloud in a cup of tea, with a newspaper’s headline featuring North Korea’s nuclear program.

A separate music video for the song was made by the U.S. television network CBS to promote their Wednesday night, post-apocalyptic drama Jericho. The video consisted of scenes from the first half of the season edited together.

The song has also been used on The History Channel in a promotional montage for the network. PBS also used the song during the first episode of the documentary series Carrier. Most recently, this song has appeared in a commercial for Sears, featuring rapper LL Cool J, actress/singer Vanessa Hudgens of High School Musical, and Ty Pennington of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

World has also been used by Autism Speaks, and several other group supporters, as a theme to promote awareness for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The song has been featured in the organization’s video’s as well as several fan made video’s promoting the cause.

Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
song title=WORLD
performer=Five for Fighting
composer=John Ondrasick
beats per trial=280
trials calibrated=10
beats measured=2,800
average beat=759 milliseconds
mean speed/average tempo/median velocity=79.0 beats per minute
total time elapsed=2,552.98 seconds
emotional concept according to the meanspeed music conjecture=Solitude
hardware=MacBook
software=Microsoft Excel
file kind=AAC protected audio
Bit Rate=128 kbps
Sample Rate=44.100 kHz
Size=3.8 MB
Volume=-7.8 dB
Profile=Low Complexity
Channels=Stereo
FairPlay Version=2
audio file type=m4p

/Ian Andrew Schneider/
December 26, 2008

There are no legal lyrics given, as is the case 98% of the time. The music sites you see as of this writing, December 26. 2008, who show the words: illegal. The video is legal, the words are not. “Law is an ass” said Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes.