Released 1992 Genre Rock Label Epic | Format CD single, 7" Length 4:12 | |
Recorded 1992, Bearsville Studios, Woodstock, New York | ||
"Galileo" is a song written by Emily Saliers and recorded and performed by folk rock group the Indigo Girls. It was released in 1992 on their platinum-selling fourth studio album Rites of Passage. It reached #10 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, the first song by the Indigo Girls to break the top ten on any chart.
The song is about reincarnation, partially through the lens of the story of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution. The song's chorus invokes both existential angst and Galileo's genius with "How long till my soul gets it right/Can any human being ever reach the highest light/I call on the resting soul of Galileo/King of night vision, king of insight", referencing both the clarity of physical vision made possible through his modernizations of the telescope and his support of Copernicanism, which stated that the Sun, rather than the Earth, was the center of the universe.