search: pop songs with weird time signatures and metric shifts

Beach Boys possibly?

much as it pains me to type his name, I've a feeling elton john's 'are you ready for love' has a strange time skip in the chorus.

Yes it does. Although its very successful in making it sound straightforward and danceable.

Beatles: "All You Need Is Love"

Layla and other songs that just change into something else almost unrelated
Top 100 songs that sound like they're really 2 or 3 songs cobbled together

(F. Mac's) "Go Your Own Way" sounds really complicated with its odd accents and drum pattern, but it's just plain old 4/4 throughout.

Also, "Carry on My Wayward Son" may just count.

King Crimson, Yes, Genesis... all UK chart acts no? Or is that cheating.

She Said She Said
Good Morning
Happiness is a Warm Gun
Dig a Pony

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.

Suddenly I think I understand part of the appeal of Idlewild's When I Argue I See Shapes. The middle-eightish vocal line that comes in at 3:13 is in 3/4 but then merges over another line in 4/4. (Video might be blocked, it is for me, fuckers.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPNFApou5_4

The chorus 'Remind Me To Smile' by Gary Numan has an interesting one:

(4/4) - "Remind me"
(4/4) - "To smile, you"
(4/4) - "Know the 'old"
(4/4) - "friends' line it"
(4/4) - "gets so I"
(7/4) - "feel like I'm in this"
(5/4) - "cold... glass cage"
(4/4) - *riff*

The 7/4 and 5/4 could be written as three bars of 4/4 - and this seems to help keep the Roland drum machine rhythm pattern in time when it gets to the next verse (which is rigidly stuck in 4/4), but it seems impossible to count them as three blocks of 4 because of the way the beats are stressed.

always enamored by this one:
Barbara Manning - B4 We Go Under (teenbeat records classic, written by Robert Scott, later re-covered by his Magick Heads)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsfW6QmL_zc

my attempt at parsing:
intro/verses: 4 4 4 6
chorus: 4 4 6

This is a crazy one that doesn't get talked about a lot, would love for the formalists talk this one through:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V7lTFzdSn0

Pre-chorus and chorus are obv in 4/4. In the verses, the rhythm section's parts are based on a pattern of 10 eighth notes grouped 3-3-2-2. You could notate that as a dotted rhythm in 5/4 or else in 10/8, which isn't a very common time signature but does seem to describe what's going on. The keyboard part still seems to be in 4 though!

(It's late and I've been drinking rum nog though.)

AMG describes it as "a surprisingly straightforward ballad"!

Is anything on the rest of Panorama this ambitious, rhythmically?

You could notate that as a dotted rhythm in 5/4

Would prob do this.

Please tell me I'm not crazy! My friends hear nothing but 4/4 in this George Jones song, but I'm hearing shortened measures early in the main verses. First happens about 13 seconds in. Very unusual for a traditional country song, methinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whj-ONfbH64

You're crazy.

Yeah, Jazzbo, you're not crazy...but you're not hearing the song correctly, I think. It's straight 4/4, a very simple two-step, completely standard structurally. Nothing unusual about it at all. What may be fooling you is the way it picks up within the measure, and the way it goes from I to V within the structure. You'll look in vain for a country tune that has any metric shifts or unusual time signatures; it simply doesn't occur.

There is absolutely one measure of 2/4 in each verse

Count along

4 bars of 4/4
1 bar of 4/4 • 1 bar of 2/4 • 2 bars of 4/4
4 bars of 4/4
4 bars of 4/4

It's not Dream Theater or anything but there's two beats dropped in each verse

yeah, E, but the song is simply a two-step. does the bassist ever deviate from playing the same pattern? Nope. you simply count the song in 2. One, two, one, two. Where's the complication here? There is none. What is perhaps notable is the structure of the song, which is completely standard in country music. There are no beats dropped at all. This song is quite similar to the Jones hit "Someone I Used to Know." Any country musician worth his salt would immediately see this is nothing to worry about and also, completely intuitive. The thing that makes it distinctive is the way it picks up from the second beat of the 2/2 measure, which I guess gives the illusion that there's something like "dropping beats" going on here. Great song.

Whiney's schemata is correct. The only difference between this part of the verse:

4 bars of 4/4
1 bar of 4/4 • 1 bar of 2/4 • 2 bars of 4/4

and this part:

4 bars of 4/4
4 bars of 4/4

...is that it spends less time on the V chord in the first part. Otherwise, the chord progression is the same both times through.

I wouldn't mind the idea of notating it in 2/2, though.

Here's another one: "Knock Three Times" by Dawn.

In the Jones song, there's a measure of 3/4. At :46, when he sings "I broke the heart." So it actually adds a beat. It's probably best notated in 2/4.

what's this song's time signature? on the album version you can hear a woman (Anna W., presumably) counting off "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgVHJjD5Bcw

i have no idea but i am so hyped that that dog. have a new record out

You'll look in vain for a country tune that has any metric shifts or unusual time signatures; it simply doesn't occur.

Brandy - What About Us
The chorus to the Bee Gees' 'Jive Talkin'
The instrumental part of MacArthur Park

Agreed that country rarely has metric shifts, but Mexican Banda and Mariachi music often does add extra beats, so when country emulates Mexican music, as with Ring of Fire, it will use metric shifts.

that that dog song is 4/4, the chorus sounds like alternating measures of 6/8 and 4/4

"What About Us?" is straight 4/4, isn't it? Just with a lot of singing behind the beat or sounds off the beat

I think the George Jones song is confusing because he starts singing before the beat appears, so every line seems to start on 2 instead of 1.

I don’t know how to say it in proper music terms.

that that dog song is 4/4, the chorus sounds like alternating measures of 6/8 and 4/4

I'd say 6/4 & 4/4 but yeah. Although, the part at 2:30 is in 7/4, but the drums keep rolling through in 4/4.

thanks. i guess i thought it was weirder than that. shows what i know!

odd that Golden Brown hasn't been mentioned http://www.rebelmusicteacher.com/blog/2016/6/14/asymmetrical-compound-meter-in-the-stranglers-golden-brown

oops, I see it has, but it's not 3/4 and 4/4

You'll look in vain for a country tune that has any metric shifts or unusual time signatures; it simply doesn't occur.

The Carter Family's Rhythmic Asymmetry

Time on the Crooked Road: Isochrony, Meter, and Disruption in Old-Time Country and Bluegrass Music

On occasions like this I like to pull out "South African Man" by Bohannon - which was a hit single in case anyone objects, in the UK at least.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO3BEUMyzgs

I overheard MGMT’s Electric Feel and noticed it has an unusual time signature. Double checked on google and it’s apparently on 6/4 safe from the instrumental bridge which is 4/4.

This song is quite similar to the Jones hit "Someone I Used to Know."

Except that song ("A Girl I Used to Know") features the standard 32 beats per 8-measure verse. "Not What I Had in Mind" has 30 beats in each verse — just count them.
Even if you consider this a two-step, there are still two beats "missing" in each verse. It doesn't bother me — I actually think it's a pretty cool thing to do in a country song. But I'm surprised so many people can't hear it.