Songfacts®:

• The lyrics for this song began with an image that came to Moby during a late-night walk in downtown New York. He explained to The New York Times: ''I like taking these walks in the middle of the night, when it's empty and quiet. 'Things will pop into your mind - a vague place or picture that I then put down in words. And the image I had for these lyrics was of two people who had died together somehow going around to places where they used to live. It was some dreamy city, a city but also an island, and this couple was sort of floating.''
• The album was called 18 according to Moby, simply because it contained 18 tracks.
• In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Moby thought some of the song's lyrics relating to flames and death took on a prophetic quality that made him uncomfortable. "It was just so close to what happened," he told The New York Times. "That I'd had this image and that I'd had it walking downtown. It felt like I'd been a barnyard animal before a storm."
  
  He changed the line "pieces of fire touch your hair" to "pieces of light." And the new chorus made the couple's demise a bit more ambiguous - they no longer died together, holding hands, they simply were together.
• 18 was Moby's follow-up to Play (1999), his mainstream breakthrough that became a global hit thanks to singles like "Porcelain," "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" and "Natural Blues."
  
  Although it didn't match the commercial success of its 12-million-selling predecessor, 18 also topped charts around the world, including the UK, and peaked at #4 in the US. The album, which sold 4 million copies worldwide, also spawned the hit single "Extreme Ways," the theme song to the Bourne film series.