Song will appear on artist’s upcoming oi album
Peter Gabriel may be bound to Newton’s law of universal gravitation, but on a new song from his upcoming oi album (release date TBA) he argues that “I Belong to the Sky.” Using a lunar calendar to determine his release schedule, Gabriel released the “Bright-Side Mix” of the song on Tuesday since Earthlings will witness a strawberry full moon at night; the “Dark-Side Mix” of the tune is due “on the next new moon” (July 14), according to his rep.
The song, at least the Bright-Side version, is a sprawling seven-plus–minute slow burn with burbling synths that recall deep cuts on Gabriel’s all-digital Peter Gabriel (1982), though with miasmas of saxophone and bright backing vocals. “Bringing the dream to life,” he sings, before purposely or accidentally acknowledging Newton’s law, “the picture is falling.” Not very bright in tone, the song feels more like a wish than a declaration.
In a statement, Gabriel explained that the song had had a long genesis and almost made it onto his i/o record in 2023 but he couldn’t finish it off. “The starting point of the song was the timpani tom-tom pattern which was inspired by an old film called Jazz on a Summer’s Day and also a wonderful drummer called Chico Hamilton. I think he was the pioneer of the use of timpani sticks on the toms and I always loved that sound; calm and hypnotic. It set a really strong mood for me and the song grew up around it.” He added that he was especially impressed by drummer Manu Katché’s work on the song.
Willing dreams into existence, or rather “how dreams leave their nest,” he said, was the point of the song. “One of the things that the technological revolution is doing is accelerating the time for thoughts to become material things,” he said. “The time it takes to transform an idea into something material is being radically cut. In the song, the verses have a more dreamlike ‘on your back and look up at the sky’ feeling and then in the chorus it’s about the execution, the materializing.”
Gabriel went into greater detail about the song’s origin in a video he posted to YouTube. In the clip, he reserved special praise for visual artist Berndnaut Smilde who used a photo by Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk for a work titled Nimbus de Toekomst 1, 2019.
Gabriel has been slowly releasing songs from oi since 2026 began. The process began with “Been Undone (Dark-Side Mix),” which came out on Jan. 3. Other’s he has released include “Put the Bucket Down” and “A Hard Lesson.”
