Levitate

Album: Levitate (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • Hornsby's first three albums were co-credited to his backing band, which was in those days called The Range. This record is his fist one to be co-credited to The Noise Makers, the name by which his touring band has been known since the late 1990s. He told The Express Night Out: "I really feel that [this] was the first time I made a concerted effort to have [me and the Noisemakers] in the room playing together."
  • The song is based on a theme in Thomas Newman's score for The Shawshank Redemption. Hornsby told The Express Night Out: "I've always loved The Shawshank Redemption score, and this one theme [in it] - I took the theme and put a beat to it and I always thought I could write a great song to that material. It's more a Bruce Hornsby and Thomas Newman song because he's the composer. I wanted to write a song - it's a little vague and I purposefully kept it vague - where the inspiration is coming from the sports world. Young kids are working hard to be great, in this case basketball. "The village children levitate" is really about young kids in the hood working on their game. Talking about the ecstatic state when you excel and have great performances, so that's where it comes from lyrically and musically."
  • The song appeared in a different version in Spike Lee's 's Kobe Bryant documentary Kobe Doin' Work.

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