Songfacts®:

• Here, Dream Theater vocalist James LaBrie sings of humanity's search for a new planet to live on as our own world is dying. We are aliens searching other worlds to colonize. "James wrote the lyrics about the idea of terraforming and looking beyond our Earth for alternative settlements," said guitarist John Petrucci. "Since we're going beyond our planet, 'The Alien' turns out to be us. I thought it was a cool and creative lyric by James."
• Dream Theater wrote "The Alien" for their 2021 album A View from the Top of the World. They began work on the album about a year after the release of their previous record, Distance Over Time, and this was the first song they wrote together.
• Dream Theater released "The Alien" as the first single from A View from the Top of the World on August 13, 2021. "It gives people a window into what it was like when we initially met up after all of those months off," Petrucci explained. "It has the adventure, the untraditional structure, the heaviness, and the hooks. It really set the tone for the album."
• "The Alien" won for Best Metal Performance at the Grammy Awards in 2022. It gave Dream Theater their first Grammy win after being nominated for the third time. Their previous nominations were for "On The Backs Of Angels" in 2012 and "The Enemy Inside" in 2014.