The Lightning Strike - Conception and Composition

Conception and Composition

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, lyricist Gary Lightbody revealed the song was conceived after he was caught in a heavy storm one night in Glasgow: "I was pretty terrified - 150-mile-an-hour winds, trees falling down. But we went outside the house, and it was also just thrilling. There was this howling wind, but it felt like silence, as if our senses were being too bombarded to cope with what was going on. So the record was born out of that feeling, of two people having a protective shell around each other. I'm not saying there's not darkness in there still, but it's happening from outward factors more than inward. Maybe things are terrifying, but they're beautiful, too. The world is extremely surprising".

"We can't write a 16-minute song just like that, as it takes an almost zen-like state to achieve without losing your place or going quite mad."

In August 2008, Lightbody joked about the song in a press release on the band's website, which revealed the track-listing for the then unreleased album: "The last song is sixteen-minutes long and by far the longest we've ever done. Don't be frightened though, it's great. Although, for now, you'll have to take my word for that and I'm pretty biased I have to say". At the time of the release of the album, SP.com posted a section featuring Gary Lightbody discussing the new songs, which was initially a Lightbody interview to RTÉ. The interview revealed that the song was initially three different songs. However, the band felt that they "worked so well together it was obvious they belonged in one place". He elaborated more on the fact in another interview with The Sun: "Just in case anybody gets frightened that we have a 16-minute song, it's a song in three parts, that we really wanted to be married together in a strange ceremony. I don't have the concentration span to write a 16-minute song. I get bored easily. But each song of the three seemed to explain the other one a lot better and they were all written around the same time and so I guess it's an unusual way of presenting them."