If a song is a house, rhythm is the foundation.
Without a strong foundation, the winds will blow, the rains will come, and you’ll be washed away. The song will not stand the test of time.
Imagine, for a minute, that I had a cardboard box and beat out the rhythm—just the rhythm—to We Will Rock You(Queen), Bennie and the Jets (Elton John), Happy Birthday, or Come Together (The Beatles). You could identify each song immediately. That’s rhythm.
And of course, you know what Igor Stravinsky said:
"There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse."
(Don’t worry if you didn’t know who Igor was—I didn’t either. He was an influential Russian-born composer in the 20th century.)
According to Britannica, “In simple terms, tempo is how fast or slow a piece of music is performed, while rhythm is the placement of sounds in time, in a regular and repeated pattern.”
I think the easiest way to differentiate tempo and rhythm is to compare them to our heartbeat. For the sake of argument, let’s say the average heart beats at about 60 beats per minute (BPM). That’s the tempo.
But the rhythm of the heartbeat is boom-boom-boom.
Listen to Be My Baby by The Ronettes.
Here’s a weird fact: there are countless hit songs with a tempo of 120 BPM. It’s a magic number. Maybe it’s because of the connection between percussion rhythm and human rhythm. As mentioned earlier, a normal human heart beats in the range of 60 BPM. A song at 120 BPM has 2 beats per second, and it just feels good... boom-boom-boom.
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