"Sail" | ||||
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Single by Awolnation | ||||
from the album Megalithic Symphony | ||||
Released | November 8, 2010 | |||
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Recorded | 2010 at Red Bull Recording Studio (Los Angeles, California) | |||
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Label | Red Bull | |||
Writer(s) | Aaron Bruno | |||
Producer(s) | Aaron Bruno | |||
Awolnation singles chronology | ||||
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"Sail" is a song by American alternative rock band Awolnation. It was released as a single on November 8, 2010. The song was first featured on the band's debut extended play Back from Earth (2010) and was later featured on their debut album Megalithic Symphony (2011). The song was written and produced in Venice, California by group member Aaron Bruno, with Kenny Carkeet performing the audio engineering.
"Sail" is the band's most commercially successful song to date. It debuted at number 89 on the United States Billboard Hot 100 chart in September 2011, spending 20 weeks on the chart before dropping out. The single re-entered the Hot 100 a year later, becoming a massive sleeper hit and reaching a new peak of number 17. It has spent the second longest time inside the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with 79 weeks, only surpassed by Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive".
While Aaron has never come out and spoken directly concerning what Sail is about, in a 2016 interview, he remembers thinking that maybe people needed a different darker sort of song than some of the more happier things that were on the radio. "I remember playing the song for a producer friend of mine, and he told me everything was great, but i needed a chorus." Bruno then tried to write a chorus, but failed to achieve what he thought the song needed. He ended up leaving out the chorus.
The video for "Sail" opens with lead singer Aaron Bruno running to a house. He enters the house relieved to have escaped from the threat outside. He shuts the blinds. Bruno then finds a tape recorder, and starts singing into it. He enters a bathroom and looks into a mirror, still singing. A green strip of light enters the house and moves across it, scanning a spacesuit helmet and a military flight-suit. As the light climbs up the stairs towards him, Bruno hides inside a full bathtub. The beam scans him in the bath. Bruno is then depicted being pulled across the floor by an unknown force; he attempts to cling to a door-frame, but loses his grip. The scene is interspersed with shots of Bruno closing a door and playing the song's piano section. As the song's final chorus section begins, the house shakes. Lights and lamps turn on and off as gusts of wind blow. Bruno is pulled by the mysterious force outside the house, and he is subsequently levitated up into the sky as a set of floodlights flash on him. He drops the tape recorder.