Speed of Grace, Clarity, Serenity amd Comfort - Jackson Browne - “The Pretender” - Conceptual Tempo Analysis - Graphs, measurements, videos

Jackson Browne wrote a song in 1975 that combined contemporary, pop, folk and hymnal. Jackson sounds interesting yet not gimmicky. In this 33 year-old song that is as good or better than anything coming around now, there are no undue modulations, no click tracks, no fancy reverb (well, maybe a little fancy reverb!) here.

Only a man of nature, Jackson “Jackson” Browne, could have the courage to tell John McCain, a five year Prisoner of War in Vietnam at the same time Jackson was yelling “in sixty-five I was 17, and called the world my own.” In ‘65 McCain was about to get beaten up for years. Yet when running for president, Jackson Browne ran into court, suing wand slapping McCain with an injunction to get the candidate to stop playing his music.

Jackson took his stand for Barack Obama, as you can understand from above, in the wrong direction. I am not saying that Jackson should have been thanking John for fighting the war he was able to avoid. I am saying: Jackson, come on, man. You are a poetic and musical visionary, timeless in some of your songs. You like liberty, don’t you? We all love your music. The politics/running into Federal Court to sue McCain for “UNSPECIFIED DAMAGES [TO JACKSON'S REPUTATION] is being kinda delusional - more like Michael “Dubai” Jackson than Andrew “Stonewall Jackson, MTV’s first host, J.J. Jackson or the sports-coool dude guru, Mr. Phil Jackson.

The meanspeed music conjecture is summarized in the scale below the summary.
Meanspeed-Carlton Summary
song title=”The Pretender”
performer=Jackson Browne
album=’The Pretender’
composer=Jackson Browne
key=G major
trials measured=10
beats per trial=590
average time per trial=346.7 seconds
emotional concept of song according to meanspeed music theory=natural clarity
average beat=0.5867 seconds
mean speed/average tempo/median velocity=102.1 beats per minute
most interesting rhyme=’pretender’ with ’surrender’
“Are you there?
Say a prayer, for the pretender.
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender…”
intellectual property=Elektra/Asylum Records For The United States and the World
kind=Protected AAC Audio File
Size=5.4 MB
Bit Rate=128,000 bytes per second
Sample Rate=44.100 kHz
file type=m4p
purchased from=Apple@/iTunes®
measured on iTunes 8.8 on a mac iBook G4
time device=Seiko 300 lap stop watches
spreadsheet software=Microsoft Excel for MacIntosh
graphs=River Newman for Meanspeed Music, © 2008. No Rights Reserved UNTIL January 11, 2009


  1. YouTube - Jackson Browne - The Pretender

    Choose the language in which you want to view YouTube. This …
    8 min -

    Rated 4.8 out of 5.0


    www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii8lB82L8wc

  2. YouTube - Jackson Browne The Pretender

    Jackson first gives an explanation of the song. Taken from a …
    7 min -

    Rated 4.9 out of 5.0


    www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhp96VWLEqA

  3. YouTube - Jackson Browne - The Pretender » Propeller

    YouTube - Jackson Browne - The Pretender ». Posted By dadesider 1 week ago in Arts & … I hope you get the audio working, my favorite verse that resonates: …
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  4. Comment » YouTube - Jackson Browne - The Pretender » Propeller

    Back to story “YouTube - Jackson Browne - The Pretender” … Post Reply. You are not signed in to Propeller.com. Please sign in or sign up to post a reply. …
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  5. The Pretender (Jackson Browne song) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    “The Pretender” is a song by American rock performer, Jackson Browne and featured … YouTube - Jackson Browne The Pretender; ^ YouTube - Jackson Browne The …
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pretender_(Jackson_Browne_song) - 33k -