Release
"Sunshowers" was released 7 July 2004 as the first single of the album Arular released by XL Recordings. It followed the release of "Galang" on Showbiz Records the previous year. The single was released on CD and 12-inch vinyl format. The B-side to the CD single contains the song "Fire Fire", while an instrumental and a cappella version of the track also follow on the tracklisting of this format. On the 12" single, tracks 2 and 3 are switched.
Uploading "Sunshowers", "Galang" and others she had recorded onto music sharing website MySpace in June 2004 paralleled the file-sharing and fast propagation of the songs around the Internet by word-of-mouth, increasing the songs' international listenership. This led to wide acclaim for the singer, who is hailed as one of the first artists to build a large fanbase exclusively via these channels and as someone who could be studied to reexamine the internet's impact on how listeners are exposed to new music. Malik Meer of The Guardian notes how the spread of the songs across the web confirmed M.I.A's status as one of the first popstars of the digital age, while Gary Shteyngart, writing for GQ, commented on how her music went viral across the internet "before anyone was even using the word "viral". On September 10, 2004, the singer attended designer Matthew Williamson's "Spring 2005" show during the Olympus Fashion Week in New York, where "Sunshowers" was used on the runway.
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Famous quotes containing the word release:
“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.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“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.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)