Release and Reception
"Light Years" peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and number 26 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Outside the United States, the single was released commercially in Australia, Austria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. In Canada, "Light Years" charted on the Rock Top 30 chart where it peaked at number 21 and stayed there for three weeks. "Light Years" reached the top 60 in the UK and the top 30 in Italy.
In Allmusic's review of the "Light Years" single, it was stated that "with more enduring and darker tones set in place, fans of Pearl Jam receive a raw and sincere taste of the band's new musical and melodic direction, perhaps ignited with the additional presence of newcomer Matt Cameron on drums." NME called the song "painfully beautiful" in its review of Binaural, while Keith Cameron of NME said in his review of the song, "The specifics of what "Light Years" is about—the death of a friend, apparently—get subsumed into the song's plangent distillation of regret, thereby rendering it perversely uplifting, a trick only the most accomplished and sincere bands can execute with anything approaching conviction." Christopher John Farley of Time described the song as "muted but passionate."
Read more about this topic: Light Years (Pearl Jam Song)
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
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“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
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“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)