Neha Patil (Editor)

Lightning Crashes

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Format
  
Cassette, CD

Genre
  
Alternative rock

Label
  
Radioactive

Recorded
  
1993

Length
  
5:27

Released
  
January 1995 (US) 1996 (UK)

"Lightning Crashes" is a song by American rock band Live. It was released in January 1995 as the third single from their 1994 album, Throwing Copper.

Contents

Although the track was not released as a single in the US, it received enough radio airplay to peak at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart in 1995. The song also topped the Billboard Album Rock Tracks (10 weeks) and Hot Modern Rock Tracks (9 weeks) charts. The song was also a top 40 hit in the UK, where the single was released in several formats.

Composition

According to the sheet music published at MusicNotes.com, the song is written in the key of C major (recorded a half step lower in B major)

Song meaning

Lead singer Ed Kowalczyk said, "I wrote 'Lightning Crashes' on an acoustic guitar in my brother's bedroom shortly before I had moved out of my parents' house and gotten my first place of my own." Kowalczyk says that the video for "Lightning Crashes" has caused misinterpretations of the song's intent.

While the clip is shot in a home environment, I envisioned it taking place in a hospital, where all these simultaneous deaths and births are going on, one family mourning the loss of a woman while a screaming baby emerges from a young mother in another room. Nobody's dying in the act of childbirth, as some viewers think. What you're seeing is actually a happy ending based on a kind of transference of life.

New York magazine described the band as "deeply mystical" and claimed that the song was, "The story of a...connection between an old lady dying and a new mother at the moment of giving birth."

Track listings

All songs written by Live:

European single

  1. "Lightning Crashes" [Edit] – 4:29
  2. "Lightning Crashes" (Glastonbury '95) [Live] – 5:15
  3. "The Beauty of Gray" (Bootleg Version) [Live] – 4:45

German single

  1. "Lightning Crashes" [Edit] – 4:25
  2. "Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)" – 3:18
  3. "Good Pain" – 5:39
  4. "Heaven Wore a Shirt" – 3:38
  5. "Negation" – 3:38

U.K. CD single 1 (RAXTD 23)

  1. "Lightning Crashes" – 5:26
  2. "The Beauty of Gray" (Bootleg Version) [Live] – 4:45
  3. "T.B.D." (Acoustic Version) – 3:49

U.K. CD single 2 (RAXXD 23)

  1. "Lightning Crashes" – 5:26
  2. "Lightning Crashes" (Glastonbury '95) [Live] – 5:16
  3. "White, Discussion" (Glastonbury '95) [Live] – 5:22

U.K. cassette single

  1. "Lightning Crashes" – 5:26
  2. "Lightning Crashes" (Glastonbury '95) [Live] – 5:16

References

Lightning Crashes Wikipedia
(Text) CC BY-SA