Backbeat

I mean, my whole life has been, you know, the backbeat has been, the backbeat has been the Beatles. ❋ Unknown (2001)

One thing I have learned - and this is going to sound silly - is that music is music, and whether it's rap or indie-rock or pop, the circuitry that makes you react to a melody or a backbeat is the same. ❋ Unknown (2010)

Tony Allen (best known as the backbeat of legend Fela's band) want us to download the 15 constituent parts of the single "Secret Agent," the title track off his new album on World Circuit label. ❋ Unknown (2009)

While Mr. Domino pounded out a steady bank of triplets (three notes to every beat), the drummer hit the second and fourth beats harder (known as a "backbeat") and the horns played call-and response bass riffs. ❋ Marc Myers (2010)

Her delivery is made up of not quite equal parts rhythmic gesture you can hear the backbeat in much of her singing and a modulated jazz inflection with which she toys with the ends of lines. ❋ Dan Alford (2011)

Within the first few minutes of the first act, a guitar and piano line converge, voices harmonize and a steady backbeat emerges—three things that never occurred in the band's music. ❋ Andy Beta (2011)

"Romulan Ale" mixes otherworldly chord changes and a slithery backbeat, conjuring up a mental image of Vulcans dancing the dirty boogie. ❋ Will Friedwald (2011)

Mr. Payton "paints" in a very expansive range of hues and shades: impressionistic sounds somewhat reminiscent of Gil Evans, funky backbeat sounds that had me thinking of Duke Pearson's larger format backgrounds for various Blue Note stars of the 1960s, and an undercurrent of tropical rhythms Cuban and Brazilian running through all of it. ❋ Will Friedwald (2011)

The rhythm guitarist, in the same mold as the other two, punctuated the backbeat with a bluesy chord, rotating through a basic progression, changing with each quick, downward strum. ❋ J. Mykell Collinz (2011)

Yet she removes the backbeat and the echo chamber not to mention the sunglasses, and reduces the song to its most emotional essentials; Orbison's colorful melismas become even more anguished and tearful. ❋ Will Friedwald (2011)

On the other hand, the strong backbeat put me into a reggae mood. ❋ Tyler (2009)

The group's three albums of the last half-decade — "Prime" (2005), "1000 Kilometers" (2006) and "In Stride" (2010) — have a much stronger, harder-swinging rhythmic drive than its earlier work, so much so that now I notice my foot actually tapping on tracks like the bass-backbeat driven "Deep Six." ❋ Will Friedwald (2011)

The smoky melody to the ensuing Ruins makes Jack Wyllie's sax more like a stringed instrument crossed with a trumpet, its quivering vibrato spooky but turning more guttural and free-jazzy as the backbeat pushes on. ❋ Unknown (2012)

Mr. Sánchez and the Cuban players struggled to find common ground, particularly in melding rock's backbeat with clave, an accented Latin beat. ❋ Jim Fusilli (2012)

It was also a rhythmically intricate thing that combined a bossa nova with another funk backbeat, and which seemed to alternate between 3/4 time and 4/4 time at different points. ❋ Will Friedwald (2011)

"For forty years, I kept on singing," she sang over a pulsing backbeat, then swung her arm around for emphasis, "before the money started r-o-l-l-i-n-g in!" ❋ Art Levine (2010)

Think early house and new romantic, big hair and 1989, Tears For Fears and Jack Your Body, all boxy, epic backbeat and a bit of Simple Minds glitter-pop, a song that wears its heart on its sleeve and its sleeves halfway up its arms. ❋ Unknown (2011)

1. [James Brown's] music was [groundbreaking] in putting emphasis on the first beat; he called such music "the one." 2. Lay that [snare drum] down in a more relaxed manner, more backbeat. 3. Ricky is always late to rehearsal, he's so backbeat. ❋ The Other Theo (2005)