Key Changer

Album: Joy Bomb (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • At 71, King's X frontman Dug Pinnick released his fifth solo album, Joy Bomb. "Key Changer" is the lead single. He calls it a "Let's just get up and have some fun" song.
  • In a Songfacts track by track, Pinnick explained: "The premise of the song - musically - was I pulled out my 8-string guitar and started making up this 'djent riff.' I was just going for some real low-tuned cool stuff that I could find that made me feel like this would be fun. When I got the riff going on my 8-string, I thought, Man! And I had this vibe in my heart, like, 'This sounds like you could dance to it.' I pulled up the drum program, found that beat, and started playing it.

    And then I realized, I'm in low-E on my guitar - where am I going to put my bass? I talked to Dick [Lövgren] from Meshuggah and said, 'Are you playing bass in unison with the guitars, or are you an octave lower?' And he said, 'No, I'm playing in unison.' I didn't know that, so I pulled out my bass and played it in regular tuning. So, the three tones are basically one bass and two guitars in the same frequency as a bass, and it gave it that fat riff going. I got excited about that.

    And then I said, 'Well, this is boring now.' So I pulled out my Les Paul and started playing the chord in the middle of it and thought, This is going to work. I put the music together and listened to it for probably about a month before the lyrics came to me: 'I want to hear music everywhere I go.' And I thought, This could be a song that everybody might get behind."

    At that point I thought, This is really worth working on. What am I going to sing about? Let the music do the talking - basically. It has all that stuff about, "Let's just get up and have some fun."
  • Pinnick made a video for this song with Jamie Brown of Smoking Gun Productions. Through the miracle of green screen, it finds him going on a journey where he dances with kids, robots, and various other creatures. It was made during the pandemic when IRL options were limited.

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