Sat in Your Lap

It was the first single from The Dreaming, released in June 1981, fifteen months before the album, and reached number 11 in the UK. Its B-side, Donovan's Lord of the Reedy River, was her first cover. The demo was laid down in September 1980 after a Stevie Wonder concert and had an extra opening verse. Hugh Padgham engineered the backing track at Townhouse, with Preston Heyman's drums recorded in the stone room of Studio 2. Paddy Bush and Heyman swished bamboo canes through the air for whip-like percussion. Jimmy Bain played bass and Geoff Downes the Fairlight trumpet, and Stewart Arnold, Ian Bairnson and Gary Hurst sang backing vocals. The single was remixed slightly for the album.

The lyric is about existential frustration and the quest for knowledge, and the biographer Graeme Thomson suggests the title implies enlightenment through sex. The video was filmed at Abbey Road Studios. Simon Reynolds called it an avant-pop stampede and a sister song to Public Image Ltd's Flowers of Romance, while NME's Paul Du Noyer was negative on release.