Time Warp (song)


"Time Warp" is a song featured in the 1973 rock musical The Rocky Horror Show, its 1975 film adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the 2016 TV production The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again. The song title comes from a dance performed during the pre-chorus of the song.

Composition and lyrics

The song is both an example and a parody of the dance song genre, with much of its lyrics consisting of instructions for performing the dance.
This dance became one of the major audience participation activities during screenings of the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show and live performances of the original 1973 stage production The Rocky Horror Show.
The song is a glam rock and rock and roll song. It is written by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley. The song is in the key of A major with a tempo of 174 beats per minute.

Placement

"Time Warp" was the fifth song in the original stage show where it was performed by Riff-Raff, Magenta, Columbia and the Narrator, but fourth in the film. O'Brien, Quinn and Campbell reprised their roles from the stage production in the film but the Narrator, now renamed the Criminologist, was instead played by Charles Gray. In the 2016 TV production, The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time-Warp Again, the number was performed by Reeve Carney, Christina Milian, Annaleigh Ashford and Tim Curry.
Stage productions continued to use the original placement until Richard O'Brien revised the script for the 1990 West End revival in which he moved the song to the film's placement. For reasons of pacing, most productions now follow this order.
The song is reprised briefly at the end of the film, in flashback, and in the stage show it serves as an encore led by Dr. Frank N. Furter.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Other appearances

The Hillywood Show used the song in a 2014 Doctor Who parody, which actor David Tennant called "extraordinary".
In the S1E9 of the English dub of The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World, Carol makes the Grim Reapers dance the Time Warp.