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 chorus of the song.

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Quick Facts from the album The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Released ...

"Time Warp"
South African single A-side label
Song by Richard O'Brien Patricia Quinn Nell Campbell Charles Gray
from the album The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Released	1975 (1975)
Genre	Glam rock rock and roll[1]
Length	3:18
Composer(s)	Richard O'Brien, Richard Hartley
Lyricist(s)	Richard O'Brien

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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. (Example: "It's just a jump to the left / And then a step to the right / Put your hands on your hips / Bring your knees in tight.")^[2]

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 productionThe Rocky Horror Show.^[3]

The song is in the key of A major.^[4]

"Time Warp" was the fifth song in the original stage show (after "Science Fiction/Double Feature", "Dammit Janet", "Over at the Frankenstein Place" and "Sweet Transvestite") where it was performed by Riff-Raff (Richard O'Brien), Magenta (Patricia Quinn), Columbia (Nell Campbell) and the Criminologist (Jonathan Adams), but fourth in the film (following "Over at the Frankenstein Place" and preceding "Sweet Transvestite"). O'Brien, Quinn and Campbell reprised their roles from the stage production in the film but 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 (Riff-Raff), Christina Milian (Magenta), Annaleigh Ashford (Columbia) and Tim Curry (the Criminologist).^[5]

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.^[6]

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 (played by Tim Curry in the original stage production and film).^[6]

The Hillywood Show used the song in a 2014 Doctor Who parody, which actor David Tennant (who portrayed the Fourteenth Doctor on the series) called "extraordinary".^[12][13][14]