Lightning Crashes

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"Lightning Crashes"
Single by Live
from the album Throwing Copper
Released February 24, 1995 (US)
1996 (UK)
Format Cassette, CD
Recorded 1993
Genre Alternative rock, post-grunge
Length 5:27
Label Radioactive Records
Writer(s) Live
Producer(s) Jerry Harrison, Live
Live singles chronology
"I Alone"
(1994)		 "Lightning Crashes"
(1995)		 "All Over You"
(1995)
Music sample
"Lightning Crashes"
noicon

"Lightning Crashes" is a song by the rock band Live, from their 1994 album, Throwing Copper.

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.[1][2] The song was also a top 40 hit in the UK,[3] where the single was released in several formats.

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.[4]

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."[5]

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

Charts

Chart (1995) Peak
position
Australian Singles Chart[6] 13
Canadian RPM Singles Chart[7] 3
UK Singles Chart[3] 33
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Airplay 12
U.S. Billboard Album Rock Tracks[2] 1
U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks[2] 1
U.S. Billboard Mainstream Top 40 6
Preceded by Billboard Modern Rock Tracks number-one single
February 25 - April 22, 1995		 Succeeded by
"Good" by Better Than Ezra
Preceded by Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks number-one single
March 25 – May 27, 1995		 Succeeded by
"December" by Collective Soul

References

  1. ↑ Whitburn, Joel The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 8th Edition (Billboard Publications, 2004), page 374
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Throwing Copper > Charts & Awards > Billboard Singles" Allmusic
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Lightning Crashes" Chart Stats
  4. ↑ Scarisbrick,John. "Lightning Strikes." Spin Magazine, June 1995, p. 52.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ "Lightning Crashes" australian-charts.com
  7. ↑ "RPM Top Singles - Volume 61, No. 17, May 29 1995" RPM via Library and Archives Canada

External links

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