Gravity

Album: True Meanings (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Paul Weller's 26th album, True Meanings, is a collection of gentle pastoral songs. This is the oldest song on the record, penned originally in 2011-12, which the singer then stockpiled. Weller explained to Uncut:

    "It started with a song Gravity, which I wrote a while ago and didn't fit on the last two records. So I built the album round that song. I wanted to find a home for it as I loved it so much. So I thought why not write the whole album like it? It's certainly reflective. At 60 I thought if you're ever going to be reflective, now is the time."
  • Irish singer-songwriter Declan O'Rourke's 2012 song "Galileo" was a game changer for Weller, throwing him into a comparable reverie.

    Who puts the rainbow in the sky?
    Who lights the stars at night?
    Who dreamt up someone so divine?
    Someone like you and made them mine?


    Weller wondered if he could ever write something that could be anywhere as good as "Galileo." In attempting to do so, Weller wrote of "golden lions in Golden Square," where "salutations fill the air," comparing his love to the elemental force that gave the resulting song its name: "Gravity." The song was a musical rebirth, pointing the way to a hitherto unexplored area of his own songwriting. "l wrote True Meanings around that," he told Uncut magazine. "I needed to create an acoustic record to make a home for it."

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