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Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (I Can't Help Falling in Love)

The album opener, with Pierce's lines filtered like spacecraft radio and a Presley song underneath.
Spiritualized, from Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997)

Written by
Jason Pierce, George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore
Released
16 June 1997
Length
3:54
Album
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space

The title comes from a passage in Jostein Gaarder's novel Sophie's World. Pierce sings some of the lines through a high-pass filter that imitates Apollo-era spacecraft communications, with Quindar tones between them. Engineer Darren Allison recalled the fun of placing the "roger" bleeps at the ends of Pierce's lines and of setting up a phone call from downstairs.

Original pressings used a version that borrowed the lyrics and melody of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love". The Presley estate objected, and a remixed version with new lyrics went on the commercial release, running 3:40 on the first pressing. The band kept using both sets of lyrics live. The 2009 reissue restored the Presley version, with the Presley title in parentheses, and the full version credits Weiss, Peretti and Creatore as co-writers. Designer Mark Farrow named it his favorite song on the album. It appeared in the film Vanilla Sky in 2001.

More songs by Spiritualized

Come Together, I Think I'm in Love, Electricity, Broken Heart, Cop Shoot Cop…

Sources

  1. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Wikipedia
  2. 1997-2017: Ladies and Gentlemen, Mister Jason Pierce, Soul Kitchen