Windmills

Album: Dulcinea (1994)
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Songfacts®:

  • Toad The Wet Sprocket's fourth album, Dulcinea, takes its name from the unseen damsel in distress who inspires courage in Don Quixote, the title character of Miguel Cervantes' 17th-century epic novel, who is beset by delusions of grandeur after reading one too many chivalric romances. Quixote is rather misguided in his heroics, as his first adventure finds him attacking windmills that he mistakes for giants.

    Toad drummer Randy Guss was reading the novel while they were making the album, which inspired lead singer/songwriter Glen Phillips to pick up a CliffsNotes version and write the album cut "Windmills."

    "That song I always felt was a little bit amorphous," he told Songfacts in 2022. "It deals more with an emotional and imagery set as opposed to a strict narrative, meaning something happened or didn't happen. It's that balance between dreaming and showing up, and living in an invented world and trying to figure out what reality is."
  • The album, which spawned the hit singles "Fall Down" and "Something's Always Wrong," sold one million copies in the US. It was the band's second album to earn Platinum status, following its breakthrough predecessor, Fear.

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