The Fastest Tempo in a Song Goes To...

Here's an old track that I show to people once in awhile... It's "Thousand" by Moby. Released in 1993, the title comes from the fact that the speed reaches 1000bpm (Beats Per Minute) at certain points.

To put that into perspective, most slow songs hover at around 60-90bpms. Fast songs (such as Punk and Drum & Bass) clocks in at around 160-175bpms. 1000bpms is unheard of. Ever. Which is why it has the Guinness world record for fastest BPMs of any released singles.

There are actually practical reasons for this. Once you pass a certain threshold, a beat becomes a single tone (because they happen so close to each other). It's also hard to maintain interest/be taken seriously when a song goes THAT fast (imagine any of your favourite songs being sung at 5-10 times the speed. It will sound fairly comical at best, not listenable at worst.).

So while being fairly gimmicky, this song DOES manage to sustain a level of listen-ability, which I think is no small feat. In fact, it reached #38 on the UK singles chart back in the day! It becomes quite unnerving as you listen to it, but I am fairly certain that it's intentional. In any case, definitely worth listening to at least once: