Rush By Numbers

I needed some data for a little side project, so I decided to use Rush songs. In the spirit of Rush geekery, I grabbed a few statistics. In the future, this might be come a dynamic page, but for now....

The data looks at studio albums of original songs only; so Feedback, live albums, and the solo albums not included.

Time and Motion

On their 19 studio albums, Rush recorded 165 songs, with a total playing time of 11 hours, 49 minutes and 40 seconds. Additionally:

Average song length is 5:24
The shortest song is "BU2B2" from Clockwork Angels at 1:28
The longest song is "2112" at 20:34
Most common song length is 4:51, occuring 4 times ("Losing It", "The Pass", "Double Agent", "Good News First")
There are 7 other song lengths that occur 3 times each: 4:05, 4:24, 4:37, 4:57, 5:01, 5:10, and 5:15

Different Strings

In terms of song composition, Rush wrote at least one song in 22 of the possible 24 keys.

The only two keys not used: A# minor (B flat minor) and A flat (G#)
36% of their songs are in the key of D or G. They wrote 30 songs in each.
24% of their songs are in A and C, with 20 songs each.
78% of their songs are in just 6 keys: D, G, C, A, Am, Em. That's 129 songs in 6 keys.
The 30 songs in the key of D represents 3 hours of Rush's music
The key of G makes up an additional 2 hours, 29 minutes
Combined, the two keys account for 46% (5 hours, 29 min) of the total playing time.

Speed of Song

Finally, for tempo, Rush's song catalog would be allegro (fast; perhaps rushed?)

Average BPM is 125
Slowest tempo is 78 BPM in the songs "Out of the Cradle" and "Halo Effect"
Fastest song is "Force Ten" at 169 BPM
Most common tempo is 120 BPM which occurs in 13 songs
Neiter Presto the album nor song is presto

Sources

The data has been compiled by me from the following sources. You can view the raw data.

All song run times come from https://www.rush.com/albums/
Keys came from https://tunebat.com/ and https://getsongkey.com/
Tempos: https://tunebat.com/ and https://getsongbpm.com/