Released 1987 Recorded 1987 Length 4:33 | Format Vinyl Genre Progressive rock Label Mercury Records | |
"Force Ten" is a song written, produced and performed by Canadian rock band Rush, released as a promotional single from their album Hold Your Fire. It was the last song written for the album. The song has been critically positively received, and peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
Contents
Writing and composition
"Force Ten" was written in three hours on December 14, 1986, the last day of pre-production for Hold Your Fire. With nine songs already written, producer Peter Collins felt it was important to have one more song for the album. Pye Dubois, who previously worked with Rush on their song "Tom Sawyer", had sent Neil Peart some lyrics for the song, and Peart would add more verses to it. Lyrically, the song describes the "storms of life," making a reference to a very high level of the Beaufort scale ("force ten" being near the scale's maximum of 12) as an analogy, according to the book Rush and Philosophy: Heart and Mind United.
Musically, "Force Ten" is composed in a A minor key, with changes into a major scale also occurring in the song. The song is set in common time at a fast rock tempo. Peart has said that Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were "trying to explore some musical areas that we hadn't covered yet," when writing the music for the song. The opening is very atmospheric before the bass guitar starts playing, which Sputnikmusic said that it "picks up the pace." Lee performed bass chords in the song, inspired to do so by his friend Jeff Berlin. The song was described by The Cavalier Daily as "intense".
Release and reception
"Force Ten" was released in the United States by Mercury Records as a 12" vinyl one-track promotional single in 1987. It is the opening track of Rush's studio album Hold Your Fire, and the song later appear on compilation albums such as Chronicles, Retrospective II, The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits 1974-1987, Gold, Icon, and Sector 3. It was also performed live on the band's Hold Your Fire tour. The song received a favorable critical reception, with Allmusic calling it "the band's [Rush] most immediate number in years," rating the song an AMG pick track, while a Sputnikmusic reviewer named Chris K. described the song as "brilliantly paced and constructed, both technically and melodically interesting," and said it was "surely one of Rush's best songs ever." The song would make it on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks, peaking #3.