mr mister "broken wings"

These are the BPMs and total track times of all the versions of "Broken Wings" that I have:

99.71 4:35:25 Eighties Complete (EMI Australia 56556, rel. 1997)
99.54 4:39:14 Totally '80s (Mastered by Steve Hoffman and the best-sounding of the bunch)
97.92 4:44:14 Sounds Of The Eighties - 1985
98.02 4:46:29 Cool Rock (Mystic Music S22-18168, rel. 1995)
98.02 4:47:04 Body Talk - Together Forever
99.26 4:58:10 Now 1986 (Virgin UK, rel. 1993)
99.38 5:24:12 Love Rocks - Hot Nights Dim Lights (Simitar 55862, rel. 1998)
99.38 5:25:24 Nipper's Greatest Hits - The 80's

The BPMs are averaged over the whole track, and in my experience are probably good to about +/-0.03 BPM. I used a free piece of software that calculates the BPMs directly from .wav or .mp3 files ("MixMeister BPM Analyzer" - was free at mixmeister.com; if it's still there, I highly recommend it.)

OK, using Billboard Top Hits 1985 as a source, you can pitch it up 0.973% to get the correct pitch. If you're using Cool Edit Pro, simply choose the "Resample" option and type 99.027 in the ratio box.

Did a more thorough pass through my archives for this song...

First, my commercial 45: RCA PB-14136, matrix number PB-14136-A-6S, pressed on vinyl (not styrene), printed 4:29, actual 4:43, 99.2 BPM throughout. The fade begins a tiny bit before the downbeat at 4:22 and has a long tail running out to 4:43.

The album version appears first on CD on the Welcome To The Real World CD on RCA, running 5:44, 99.3 BPM throughout. The album version has a ridiculously long fade, beginning at the downbeat at 5:11. The sound is actually quite good on this original '80s-era RCA CD, although the levels are a bit low by modern standards - there's about 3 dB of headroom.

The version on Time-Life's 2-CD Modern Rock Vol. 3 1984-1985 (1999) is digitally exactly 1.9 dB louder than Welcome To The Real World.

The first compilation the song appeared on was RCA's Nipper's Greatest Hits The '80s (1990), which runs 5:23 and 99.4 BPM. The difference between this and the album version is just an early fade. Nipper begins its fade at the same point as the album version, around 5:11, but fades more quickly, so that it's about 20 seconds shorter than the album version. The difference is all in the fade. Sound is pretty good, though.

There's a differently-EQ'd digital clone of Nipper on Simitar's Love Rocks 6 Hot Nights Dim Lights (1998).

EMI's UK 2-CD Now 1986 (1993) seems to use the same analog transfer as Welcome, but with an early fade that runs from the downbeat at 4:41 to 4:58. It also runs at 99.3 BPM. Sound is also quite good here.

The first time the 45 edit appeared on CD is on Razor & Tie's 2-CD Totally '80s, where it runs 4:36 and 99.5 BPM. The fade begins at the right place at 4:22, but has a shorter tail, running only out to 4:36. That makes it about 7 seconds shorter than true 45, and the difference is only in the very tail of the fade. The tempo is about the same as the 45. The sound is OK on this disc - it's mastered by Steve Hoffman, and it seems like he got some decent source tapes for this track. (Not as good as the Billboard disc noted below, though.)

The version on JCI's Only Rock 'N Roll 1985-1989 (1994) uses the same analog transfer as Totally '80s and sounds nearly identical to that disc.

The 45 edit appears on the 50-CD promo set The A List Disc 31 (1994), where it runs 4:30 and at 99.3 BPM. It seems to be a homemade edit from the LP version - the fade starts early at 4:03 and ends early at 4:30. Sound is OK - I didn't hear any evidence of noise reduction. I'd bet that this is a TM Century in-house edit.

Bill Inglot did a fresh analog transfer of the 45 version for Rhino's Billboard Top Hits 1985 (1994). Sound quality is great, but the whole song runs too slow at 98.0 BPM, or about 1.2%. It's noticeable. The fade point starts at the right point in the song, which falls at about 4:25 (compared to 4:22 on the 45). The fade runs out to about 4:43 here, which is about 2 or 3 seconds shorter than the true 45 fade-to-silence point, but you wouldn't notice since it's down at about -50 dB.

So it's noteworthy that the true LP and 45 versions both run about 99.3 BPM (+/- about 0.2 BPM for disc-to-disc variations). The Billboard disc runs slow at 98.0 BPM, and this disc is the source of the speed problems for this song.

There are a boatload of CDs that all use the same analog transfer as Billboard Top Hits 1985, all running too slow by 1.2% at 98.0 and all running about the same length as Billboard Top Hits 1985 at 4:43. They include: Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 2 1985 (1994), Cema's 2-CD Cool Rock (1995, digitally identical to Billboard), Time-Life's 2-CD Body Talk Vol. 4 Together Forever (1996, digitally exactly 1.706 dB quieter than Billboard), Time-Life's single-CD Body Talk Hearts Together (1998, digitally exactly 2.706 dB quieter than Billboard), and Time-Life's 2-CD Classic Soft Rock Cool Night (2007, digitally exactly 3.975 dB louder than Sounds Of Eighties 1985 and clips a bit).

There's one more outlier - the Australian 5-CD box from EMI called Eighties Complete Vol. 1 (1997), where the song runs a tiny bit fast at 99.7 BPM, and fades from 4:22 to 4:32. Another early fade of the 45 version. The source tapes for this version aren't as clean as for the others - the high end is slightly muted.

So, to sum up, the best-sounding version of the 45 is on Rhino's Billboard Top Hits 1985, but it needs to be pitched up by about 1.2%. (Audacity can do a "change speed" very easily.) If you pitch it up, the fade will start in the right place, with the right shape, and will end about 2-3 seconds short of the true 45 - that's close enough because it's down at -50 dB at that point.

Edited by crapfromthepast