Songs Like The Killing Moon — The 1984 Record That Measures Like 1971
By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-09-09
Three records return figures identical to The Killing Moon: intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 90 BPM. They are Riders on the Storm (1971), Plush (1992) and Love Sick (1997). The Killing Moon itself is 1984 and reads 92 BPM. Four songs, four decades, one measured shape.
The dynamic range is the tell
A 7 is high. It means the recording covers a lot of ground between its quietest and loudest points — and paired with a mild sudden-changes reading, it says the song covers that ground without ever jolting. That is a narrow specification, and it is why this particular group of songs keeps recurring in our data rather than dispersing. We tag the mood melancholy and spacious.
The full band
- Riders on the Storm — The Doors, 1971. Intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 90 BPM.
- Plush — Stone Temple Pilots, 1992. Intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 90 BPM.
- Love Sick — Bob Dylan, 1997. Intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 90 BPM.
- When The Sun Hits — Slowdive, 1993. Intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 86 BPM.
- Ný batterí — Sigur Rós, 2000. Intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 85 BPM.
- No More ‘I Love You’s — Annie Lennox, 1995. Intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 85 BPM.
- Last Request — Paolo Nutini, 2006. Intensity 42, dynamic range 7, 85 BPM.
- Tides — Bonobo, 2021. Intensity 43, dynamic range 7, 95 BPM.
Why the era spread is the point
This is a list where our method earns its keep. Nobody filing The Killing Moon by genre would shelve it beside a Paolo Nutini single or a Bonobo instrumental, and a recommendation engine trained on listening habits would be unlikely to suggest either. They arrive here because the recordings behave the same way over their length, which is the only thing we claim to measure.
The Slowdive and Sigur Rós entries are the two that will feel most immediately right, since they share the reverb-heavy production as well as the numbers. The rest ask you to accept that a shape can survive a change of costume.
Figures are our own measurements, read from the public API at build time. The genre and era spread is a consequence of measuring sound rather than style — it is not a claim that these artists resemble each other in any other way. No lyrics are reproduced.