I Can't Make You Love Me If You Don't - tempo spreadsheets by meanspeed® music - tempo of epic melodrama

I Can't Make You Love Me If You Don't - tempo spreadsheets by meanspeed® music - tempo of epic melodrama

These are some numbers that put some reality of the adjectives you will find when most others discuss this song.  I know – “epic” / “melodrama” – they are nouns!  Seriously, this song really tears your heart out.  I’ve heard others try to do it and they rely *too much* on the key 2 beats per minute *below* One Hertz.  What is so fantastic about about the song, for me admittedly, is at the end of the chorus when Bonnie sings the word “don’t.”  The song is in Bb major and Bonnie is hitting a note that cannot even be [properly notated].  A diatonic song would land the note on the major 7th of the chord, or the d natural.  In a way that only a BEST of singers can do, B.R.  hits a tone approximately 1/4 tone lower – and then h-o-l-d-s it.  The sound to me is epic in that the note never really resolves – but in a way that I just want to turn the song on again.

Meanspeed-Flannery Tempo Analysis
performer=Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Hornsby
song title=”I Can’t Make You Love Me (If You Don’t)”
mean speed=57.3 beats per minute
average beat=1.047 seconds
mean frequency=0.955 Hertz
mean emotion as would be predicted by the meanspeed music conjecture=melodrama/epic

I Can't Make You Love Me (If You Don't)

Ian Andrew Schneider

James St. James Neumann

April 7, 2009