Orpheus

Written by Sylvian and produced with Steve Nye, it was recorded in 1987 at Château Miraval in the south of France, Wisseloord in Hilversum, and in London and Bath. Brian Gascoigne wrote its orchestral arrangement, making it one of only two songs on the album not scored by Sakamoto, who plays piano and synthesisers. Steve Jansen's drums, Danny Thompson's double bass, Phil Palmer's slide guitar and Mark Isham's flugelhorn complete the band. Virgin released it as the album's second single on 3 May 1988, backed with Mother and Child, with The Devil's Own added on the 12-inch, and a promotional video was made. It did not chart, though AllMusic calls it a near-hit.

The song evokes the myth of Orpheus. Pitchfork called it his most forthright song, and AllMusic placed it with The Boy with the Gun among the most conventional yet penetrating songs he has written. Asked about it in 2010, Sylvian chose not to pin down the experiences behind the writing. The 2003 reissue added a bonus track whose title, Promise (The Cult of Eurydice), names Orpheus's wife, and the 2026 official biography returns to the figure he invoked in 1987. The Italian magazine Rumore placed it 96th in its top 300 songs of all time.

Live

He first played it on 23 March 1988 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the opening night of the In Praise of Shamans tour, and setlist.fm logs 79 performances up to 14 May 2002 at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, level with The Boy with the Gun as his most played song. He sang it with piano or guitar on the 1995 Slow Fire tour, and on the Everything and Nothing tour the Guardian's John Aizlewood praised the quiet menace he brought to it at Hammersmith Apollo in 2001. Duncan Sheik covered it on his Humming Along EP in 1998. Both uploads in the hypersongs web are the same studio recording: one is the official art track of the 2003 remaster, the other a fan upload of the 1988 promotional video.