"Crystal Ball" | ||||||||||
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Single by Keane | ||||||||||
from the album Under the Iron Sea | ||||||||||
B-side | "Maybe I Can Change" "The Iron Sea: Magic Shop Version" |
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Released | 21 August 2006 | |||||||||
Format |
7" Vinyl CD single |
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Recorded | Heliocentric Studios, Rye, East Sussex The Magic Shop, New York City |
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Genre | Alternative rock | |||||||||
Length | 3:53 | |||||||||
Label | Island | |||||||||
Writer(s) |
Tim Rice-Oxley Keane |
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Keane singles chronology | ||||||||||
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Tim Rice-Oxley
Tom Chaplin
Richard Hughes
"Crystal Ball" is a song performed and composed by English rock band Keane, and featured on their second studio album, Under the Iron Sea. The song was released on 21 August 2006 as the third single from the United Kingdom album version (see 2006 in British music). "Crystal Ball" was also released on 18 August 2006 in the Netherlands and peaked at #20 in both the Dutch Singles Chart and the UK Singles Chart.
"Crystal Ball" was composed by Tim Rice-Oxley in 2006. It was recorded at the Helioscentric Studios, East Sussex and at the Magic Shop, New York City. Guitar effects are created by a distorted Yamaha CP70.
Similarly to other Keane songs such as "Somewhere Only We Know", the song follows a quaver-note driven sound. Several effects, like the aforementioned distortion piano and strings, are added through the song. The fading-in intro is often referred as a continuation to "The Iron Sea", and represented as an immediate returning to surface of the "Iron Sea". Vocals are introduced at 19 seconds and continue until fading on 3:04. The demo version included on the bonus DVD of the album would reprise the intro riff before the finale.
It was recorded at the Magic Shop Studios in New York City. It was first known by a shot on the Under the Iron Sea DVD, as well as in the June issue of the Q Magazine. It is rumoured amongst the band's fanbase that this song may have been composed by Chaplin as a response to Rice-Oxley's "Hamburg Song" and "Broken Toy". In May 2015, Chaplin tweeted that it was Rice-Oxley that wrote the song.