Song Details
Wilson states that, while there is no unifying theme or concept behind the album,
"There are at least four or five songs on that record which I call the divorce songs, the relationship songs, which are all about various stages of the splitting up a relationship, of dissolving a relationship. Russia On Ice, How Is Your Life Today, Shesmovedon, Feel So Low, I mean, the last track of the album. The period in a relationship, where the relationship is kind of... still exists, but it's in that period where, really, there is nothing left but hatred and despise - Hatesong is the other one. But then on the other hand, there are groups of songs on the album which are all about various childhood... nostalgic childhood reminisces, Lightbulb Sun and the first part of Last Chance To Evacuate Planet Earth, Where We Would Be. So there are kind of groups of songs. And then there's a couple of songs that don't have any relation to anything else. Four Chords That Made A Million doesn't have any relation to anything else on the album, or anything else I've ever written. It's just that."
The tracks "Four Chords That Made a Million", "Where We Would Be" and "Russia on Ice" were premiered during the Stupid Dream tour in 1999, several months before Lightbulb Sun's release.
The track "Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled" features a speech by the leader of the Heaven's Gate religious cult. This U.S. cult believed that they were from another planet and only visiting earth. In order to return to their own "dimension" before the earth was "recycled", such extraterrestrial entities must find each other and commit mass suicide. The words are taken from the video they made before killing themselves to explain to the rest of the world why they had done it.
The track "The Rest Will Flow" is slower on the remaster, due to having been sped up from its originally recorded speed in the original master in order to make it more "radio-friendly". It originally was in danger of being left off the album altogether, as some band members questioned if it fit in with the rest of the album, but Wilson ultimately kept it on, arguing that it had "single potential". The song was in fact intended to be the album's third single, scheduled for October 2000 release, but its cancelled for undisclosed reasons.
The song "Feel So Low" was re-recorded in 2004 by Blackfield, which is a project that consists of Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson and Israeli singer/songwriter Aviv Geffen. The first verse of that version was sung in Hebrew by Geffen. This version only made it to the vinyl edition of the first Blackfield album. Later live renditions of this track by Blackfield were sung entirely in English but differed significantly from the Porcupine Tree original, as they added a long, heavy instrumental section at the end.
Wilson believes that the track "Buying New Soul", which was later only released on the b-side compilation Recordings and the 2008 reissue of the album, probably would have been included on the original release of the album had it been written and completed a few months earlier.
Read more about this topic: Lightbulb Sun
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