Bobby McFerrin · Simple Pleasures

Don’t Worry Be Happy

Don’t Worry Be Happy is in B major at 69.3 beats per minute.

Tempo

69 BPM · Adagiomedian of 276 analyses · 69.1–69.4 across the middle eight tenths

Key: B major5 sharps · the key most of the analyses agreed on
Agreement: 58%share of analyses that agreed
Analyses: 276people who ran the extractor
One beat: 865.8milliseconds, 60,000 ÷ BPM
Tuning: 440.5Hz · +2 cents from A 440
Dynamics: 5.11dB the level wanders from its average
Loudness: 0.241Essentia's 0–1 scale, not dB
Danceability: 1.05Essentia's danceability, 0–3

Source: AcousticBrainz, dump of 2022-06-23 (CC0) · MusicBrainz core data, 2026-09-17 (CC0) · how each number is measured. Measured up to 23.06.2022 — AcousticBrainz stopped collecting in 2022, so nothing released after that date is here.

What the numbers say

276 independent analyses of this recording were submitted to AcousticBrainz. A bare majority of them — 58% — put it in B major, a key signature of 5 sharps. The tempo printed above is the median of the 276 readings; 100% of them land within 2% of it, and they barely differ at all.

At 69.3 BPM one beat lasts 865.8 milliseconds, so a sixteenth note is 216.5 ms and a dotted eighth 649.4 ms — the delay times for this recording. Counted half as fast it is 34.7 BPM, counted twice as fast 138.6. A score would mark that Adagio, by the ranges this site uses.

The analyses put the reference pitch of the recording at 440.5 Hz, which is 2 cents above concert A at 440 Hz — close enough to standard that a tuner would not argue. That is a fact about this transfer of the music, not about how it was played.

The dynamic complexity of the recording measures 5.11 dB: that is how far the level wanders from its own average, so a small number means a loud, flat master and a large one means a recording that still breathes. Its average loudness is 0.241 on Essentia's 0-to-1 scale, which is not decibels and is not comparable to a streaming service's number.

10 other recordings here are in B major; the ones listed below are the closest in tempo.

Beats per bar are not in this dataset. AcousticBrainz's analysis reports a tempo, a key and a loudness, and no time signature at all, so this page does not print one — a 4/4 here would be a guess dressed as a measurement.

Keys that fit with B major

Each of these differs from B major by at most one accidental, or shares its tonic. That is the whole of what a mixing wheel encodes; here the relations are named instead of numbered.

Delay times at 69 BPM

Note value	Beats	Milliseconds	Hertz
Whole note	4	3463.2	0.29
Half note	2	1731.6	0.58
Dotted quarter	1.5	1298.7	0.77
Quarter note (one beat)	1	865.8	1.16
Quarter triplet	0.667	577.2	1.73
Dotted eighth	0.75	649.4	1.54
Eighth note	0.5	432.9	2.31
Eighth triplet	0.333	288.6	3.47
Dotted sixteenth	0.375	324.7	3.08
Sixteenth note	0.25	216.5	4.62
Sixteenth triplet	0.167	144.3	6.93
Thirty-second note	0.125	108.2	9.24

Half time 34.7 BPM · double time 138.6 BPM. Every row is one beat (865.8 ms) times the fraction in the second column.

Closest in key and tempo

Recordings in B major, ordered by how near their tempo is to 69 BPM. A calculation, not a recommendation.

All songs in B major

MusicBrainz collapses 63 recording ids into this one. Recording id 6b74f878-6c0b-4625-a878-cbabd81d0db2.