Songfacts®:

• One of the most popular and enduring songs in the Dave Matthews Band catalog, "Satellite" is also one of their most intriguing. A satellite looks down from orbit, constantly observing what we can't see at ground level. It can also bring us TV channels.
  
  So, is the song about shifting perspectives? The media? Human connection?
  
  Probably all of the above. Dave Matthews isn't sure himself.
  
  The song is often assumed to be about his father, who died in 1977 when Dave was 10 years old. When he sat down for an interview with GQ and asked if this was the case, Matthews replied, "Maybe."
  
  He then offered this explanation:
  
  "Lyrics are not easy. Some people are really good at it, but the songs that I'm unapologetic about are the ones that come quickly. Then they don't have time to get dragged through the gravel or through the dirt. I don't think too clinically about them, but I imagine that a therapist might look at 'Satellite' and say, 'That's about death or about loss or about accepting that it is loss." Then if you look at my life, you'd say, 'Well, his dad died.' But my dog died too, so it could be about my dog."
• "Satellite" is one of the earliest Dave Matthews Band songs, dating back to 1991 soon after they formed in Charlottesville, Virginia. They played it live that year and made it a regular feature in their sets, refining it along the way. The band have always encouraged fans to record their shows, so there are lots of live recordings of the song floating around. In 1993 they signed with RCA Records but didn't reveal that to the public. Instead, they released an album independently later that year called Remember Two Things that includes the song. RCA helped them promote the album, which circulated widely and built a buzz for the band. They included it on their 1994 major-label debut album, Under The Table And Dreaming, which increased their fanbase exponentially. The tracks "What Would You Say" and "Ants Marching" got loads of airplay in 1995, and "Satellite" followed, keeping them on the airwaves into 1996. None of these songs were sold as singles, so you had to buy the album to get them. It ended up selling over 6 million copies in America.
  
  "Satellite" was still getting airplay when the band released their next album, Crash, in April 1996.
• Nursery rhymes come in handy for lyrics and melodies, seeing as they've endured for hundreds of years. On this song, Matthews borrows a bit from "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" when he sings:
  
  Like a diamond in the sky
  How I wonder
• This song is a great example of how Dave Matthews Band can deploy all their musical weapons, including the violin played by Boyd Tinsley and the saxophone by LeRoi Moore. These guys brought jazz textures to their songs that helped them stand out on the radio but also opened them up for live improvisation. The band is known for their live performances, where they never play a song the same way twice.
  
  LeRoi Moore died in 2008 after an ATV accident, and Tinsley left the group in 2018.
• After the 44-second intro, it's almost impossible not to sing the first word in this song, articulating it out like Matthews does: "Sat-A-Lite." This is a big moment at DMB concerts, where the intro can stretch out for a while.
• The acoustic guitar intro is a distinguishing feature in this song. Dave Matthews told GQ how he came up with it:
  
  "'Satellite' was a challenging lick. I liked to watch like Robert Fripp and how he played, but he has got this crazy way of playing - his hands are all spread out and he gets all this coverage, which is unnecessary if your guitar's tuned traditionally. It made me just mess around with that feeling of being spread out.
  
  And then another friend of mine had said, 'Why do rock bands always do everything in A and E and C? Why don't they ever do anything in A Flat or E Flat?'
  
  I was like, 'Well, 'cause all the cords are down there.''
  
  That made me think, If I'm doing this weird spread-out thing, I can find a pattern that works that looks kind of like Robert Fripp and is A flat.
  
  The way I first learned to play it and sing at the same time was sort of an exercise. I would just play it over and over again and I would try and talk while I was doing it, and I'd make up silly lyrics to it.
  
  It taught me that you can separate my voice from my guitar. Like one could be the marching orders and the other one could be singing and dancing, flying around a structure."
• The music video was directed by Wayne Isham, whose work includes "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Mötley Crüe and "Bye Bye Bye" by 'N Sync. It stars Johnny Galecki as a guy operating a satellite array that tunes in the band. At the time, Galecki had a regular role on the TV series Roseanne; he later starred as Leonard Hofstadter in The Big Bang Theory.
• Alanis Morissette had this to say about the song: "'Satellite' is one of the most beautiful songs written by a man I've ever heard. I can tell these aren't lyrics that he thinks into being, these are lyrics that course through him."