Format CD, vinyl | ||
Released 26 January 2004 (United Kingdom) Genre Alternative metal
post-grunge
hard rock
nu metal Length 4:35 (album version)
4:04 (radio edit) Label Columbia, Visible Noise Writer(s) Mike Chiplin, Lee Gaze, Mike Lewis, Jamie Oliver, Stuart Richardson, Ian Watkins | ||
"Last Train Home" is the second single from Start Something, the second album by the Welsh rock band Lostprophets. This single is the band's joint highest charting in the UK to date, tied with "Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)". It remains their most successful in the USA. "Last Train Home" was released to radio on December 2, 2003.
Contents
Release and reception
"Last Train Home" was released in the spring of 2004 and became the most successful song from Start Something on the rock charts and arguably the band's most recognizable and popular song. The song peaked at number one on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart and number ten on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. "Last Train Home" is the second Lostprophets single to ever chart in the U.S., the first one being "Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja". The song won the Kerrang! Award for Best Single.
Johnny Loftus of Allmusic said "'Last Train Home' was an absolute masterpiece of pop single mixing board surgery, flawlessly, brazenly binding the properties of three of California's most marketable acts into one monster of an alternative rock anthem, sung by a bunch of immaculately T-shirted dudes from Pontypridd. Beginning with an instrumental run through its unstoppable chorus, the song drifted into faraway echoes of piano as vocalist Ian Watkins emoted vaguely meaningful lyrics like 'Love was once apart / But now it's disappeared.'"
Kirk Miller of Rolling Stone said "Last Train Home" is "one of the catchiest hard-rock songs to hit the radio in the past three years. Singer Ian Watkins has Mike Patton's croon/scream down cold, and his group deftly applies FNM's anything-goes approach: equal parts thrash riffs, symphonic keyboards and moody jazz intervals."
The music video was directed by Brian Scott Weber, and was shot in various Downtown Los Angeles locations in November 2003. In the video, Ian Watkins wears the Pittsburgh Strikers T-shirt (an amateur football club in Western Pennsylvania).
"Last Train Home" was also the song which introduced Geoff Rickly to Lostprophets.
Personnel
On "Last Train Home"