Oblivion

Album: Typhoons (2021)
Charted: 72
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds frontman Mike Kerr recounting how years of living the hedonistic rock and roll lifestyle found him flying too close to the sun.

    Somewhere, I lost my way
    Let myself go to waste
    Can't seem to change my fate
    Oblivion, oblivion


    After realizing he was "running out of lifelines," Kerr took up sobriety in 2019.
  • At 2:41, this is the second shortest track on Typhoons. It was also a late addition to the album. The Royal Blood duo of Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher recalled the story of the song in a video track-by-track with NME:

    Mike Kerr: "'Oblivion' was right at the end of the process. I think at the time of writing we felt like we had our album complete so it was to us it was this bonus jam we had going on, but the more and more we developed it we realised it was turning into this yeah almost like the missing piece of the puzzle really because it has a very danceable aspect to it but there was something very reminiscent of where we began as a band as well. It's very simple and also so I think we really enjoyed how brutal the arrangement was but nothing hangs around; the minute you think you're going to get bored of hearing something it changes. It's all over very quickly."

    Ben Thatcher: "Bit like our attention span."

    Mike Kerr: "'Oblivion' is what our attention span sounds like."
  • It wasn't released as a single, but the song still debuted in the UK singles chart the week following the release of Typhoons. This was because fans downloaded "Oblivion" enough times to get it entered on the tally at #72.

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