drops of jupiter Archives

Drops of Jupiter Meaning Like most people, I loved Train’s song “Drops of Jupiter” when it came out in 2001. I ran out and bought the CD of the same name, playing the CD over and over again, but especially repeating the title track. And then, like most people, I got a little tired of hearing it played everywhere.

But recently, I heard an interview with Train’s Pat Monahan, explaining how he came to write the song. It may have been that I had missed his earlier interviews about the meaning of the song. Or maybe I had heard the explanation but had not connected with the explanation as I did now around a time when I had lost two people very close to me. But hearing his explanation made the song make a lot of sense to me.

Now that she’s back in the atmosphere,
With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey, hey, hey.

Monahan wrote “Drops of Jupiter” soon after his mom had passed away following a battle with cancer. In the song, he imagines that after dying his mom’s spirit could go anywhere, and so a person would be likely to go explore the universe.

As Monahan explained in a Buzzfeed News interview, “It’s a story about my mother coming back after like swimming through the planets and finding her way through the universe, and coming back to tell me that heaven was overrated and [to] love this life, you know?”

She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there’s a time to change, hey, hey, hey

Thus, his mother returned to visit him with “drops of Jupiter” in her hair. Pretty cool.

Monahan wrote the song in less than an hour. The song came to him in a dream, and after he woke up, the song was in his head. When he woke up, he took about thirty minutes to write it down and sing the words into a Dictaphone. The next night before bed he finished it up, and the song that was a conversation with his late mom was complete.

And tell me, did Venus blow your mind?
Was it everything you wanted to find?
And did you miss me
While you were looking for yourself out there?

After the song was recorded, it propelled the band’s popularity into the universe. “Drops of Jupiter” went on to win the Grammy for Best Rock Song. Monahan thanked his mom when he accepted the award.

Of course, the great thing about songs is that you can always interpret them in your own way to find something for your own life. So if you hear something else or another thing in the song, that is cool too. But it is also great to know the story behind the song. (For a short video about the story, check out this video on YouTube.)

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Happy April Fool’s Day. Today, we consider the prank played by Train’s song, “Hey, Soul Sister,” where upon hearing the title you expect the song to be some type of soul song. Train’s joke is revealed from the moment you hear the strumming of the ukelele and you soon realize instead that “Hey, Soul Sister” is a boy band song. And a darn good one at that.

I liked Train since they released their first self-titled album in 1998. And when they later released “Drops of Jupiter” in 2001 on the album of the same name, I loved the song even as it was played endlessly on the radio. But then I did not hear about them for years, and suddenly there was this big hit I saw referenced several times before I actually heard it, “Hey, Soul Sister” from Save Me, San Francisco (2009).

According to Wikipedia, “it is the 8th most downloaded song in history, the most downloaded song of all time for Columbia Records, the top-selling song on iTunes in 2010.” Eighth in history? And I realize that it may not be fair to compare songs that were not released for the first time in the age of the Internet, but if it is the most downloaded song of all time for Columbia, it has been downloaded more times than Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” It was huge.

While “Hey, Soul Sister” is a good song, I must admit I never understood why it became such a gigantic hit for Train. According to Train lead singer Patrick Monahan, who co-wrote the song, he was inspired by imagining what it would be like to attend Burning Man, a party in the desert with naked people running around. But for some reason, I doubt they listen to “Mr. Mister” at Burning Man, so I do not know what he was thinking. Here’s the acoustic ukelele-only version.

Monahan has an excellent voice, and you cannot help but sing along, but it seems odd that a man of Monahan’s age (40 the year the song was released) sings the cheesy line, “You’re so gangsta, I’m so thug.” Yet, the line works when someone young sings the song, as a young man might be so naive — and sincere — to make such a silly claim to the object of his affection. The rest of the lyrics fit better for a naive young singer too.

You gave my life direction, a game show love connection we can’t deny;
I’m so obsessed, my heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest;
I believe in you, like a virgin, you’re Madonna, and I’m always gonna wanna blow your mind.

“My untrimmed chest”?

That is why the song works so much better as a boy band song, and why I never particularly “got” the song until I heard it performed by singers on Glee on one of the few episodes of the TV show I have seen. While I am not a fan of of the boy band era of music, I am not so snooty that I can resist a good pop song. And if you are going to do a boy band song, it should be left to the boy bands. And the song works much better for Darren Criss and the Warblers, who make the hit song their own on Glee.