DISQUS

bre_anachronism · 3 months ago

The opening part to "Astronaut" is one of those pieces of music that tightens your chest. I'd elaborate, but people either get that description or don't get it, and trying to explain it out really only confuses it more. It's paralyzing, almost.

Your little ripped tights were punk rock before you even knew what punk rock was- that's about as badass as it gets.

startstaticliza · 3 months ago

What is punk rock, in your terms? If you say Casualties, I'll blow my mind.

KinkyTurtle · 3 months ago

I fucking love this blog series; seeing the artist go in detail about the creation of their art is like a gift. I know some people don't like it because they feel like it limits their own interpretations of the song but I think it all depends on how you look at it: you can take the song any way you want but it's still really great to see what the artist went through while creating it, it's just one of many insights into the music itself. Whether that insight is more weighty than others is all a matter of personal preference.

Thank you for sharing your art with us and for taking the time to talk about what they mean to you and what they meant while you were writing them. <3

Annie & misterious band · 3 months ago

Absolutely, totally in love with this song ince the first sounds. That's no surprise, I guess. Hope I'll have a chance to show my love someday in a special way. We keep on perparing a little gift. However, the best season to finish it will be autumn or first days of winter. God give us better technical equipment and acoustic hall so the whole world can meet our love for the best AFP's song :)

Alex · 3 months ago

This is so beautiful, thank you.

lovehound · 3 months ago

this is the song that made me fall in love with your music, and then you, and it'll always have a special place in my heart and my head, for all it brought me.

tim · 3 months ago

for anybody with a copy of 'a short history of nearly everything' the 'random frantic action' quote is on page 460 (at least it is in the edition that i have), in the chapter called 'cells'

fiona42 · 3 months ago

It's my favourite song from the album too (with Runs in the Family as a close second), hearing it always reminds me of my friend who I realised I loved a year too late.

It's always amazing to see a little bit of the inside of your brain, just makes me want to learn more.

Chris · 3 months ago

I still get the chills whenever I hear this song.
"goin' to be good"? Yeah-- I'd say so.

therealtaryn · 3 months ago

Absolutely wonderful. :)

Gongtopia · 3 months ago

Astronaut is my fave song from the album…it just moves me.

Dorothy · 3 months ago

The piano at the very beginning just grabs me somewhere inside my heart every time!

Awesome and thanks for sharing.

meah · 3 months ago

This was a very beautiful blog which somehow ended up backed by Simon and Garfunkel, which made it more beautiful by being Christmas music and a news reel. But your age at the time of the rocket class/challenger disaster kept changing. I'm confused now.

purpleval · 3 months ago

Oh Amanda, thank you for sharing all this with us! It's a beautiful story really--I had no idea what on earth the song ever meant but it's my favorite song off the CD and now I know!

Also, random tidbit--I was born the day after the Challenger exploded. :/

paisami · 3 months ago

this was the first song i heard you play live. those first few notes simultaneously broke my heart and made me delirious with joy. i still have that weird surge of conflicting emotions every time i hear it.

it's a beautiful story. it's so amazing to hear about how and why you wrote it.

looking forward to the next installment. <3

Name · 3 months ago

Astronaut is easily one of my favorite songs ever. Knowing even more about it makes it just that much more... special.

Fiorella · 3 months ago

WHOA, i don't understand why "astronaut" but it's also one of my favourites.
You're a great compositor, AFP!
I love you♥

PS: Come to Argentina, please :) i know it's pretty far away...
PSS: Look my web. It's a fotolog about you and Brian!

bodnoirbabe · 3 months ago

Amazing! At one of your beach ninja gigs, I asked you what the meaning was behind "The Point of it All" and you said "So many little things". At first, I was disappointed, because that song is such an enigma for me and I wanted to know the point of it. It's also my favorite. But now, having described just what went into my other favorite, Astronaut, I can see what you mean. There isn't one point at all to any one song, is there? Most of it is personal, some of it is global, but all of it is a bunch of little things brought together to make a huge amazing thing.

And that is magic, art, and awesome all combined into one. BRAVO!

danburt · 3 months ago

This is my favorite song on the album. In Birmingham, Alabama, at the Workplay Theater, you stunned the audience when you opened forcefully with "Astronaut". My teenage son said you scared him a little with your powerful performance.

katsim · 3 months ago

Thank you for posting this - like everyone else I love having this insight into the songs. Also timely as I was playing Astronaut earlier on piano, the 'vamp' is so satisfying to play!

kazgates · 3 months ago

you are...never endingly inspiring to me....yet again i have been inspired to write.....music, lyrics.....thoughts....thought i havent thought in quite some time...
you even inspire memories...
i really enjoy such a close look at the world from an amazing person with the same exact life i can only hope to haves point of view....*smiles*

~`@kaz

kazgates · 3 months ago

simply amazing...you inspire me further...again...i have been inspired to create...lyrics...music...
you have inspired me to remember....
rember bits of things within my own head that inspired me...
i really enjoy such a close look at the world i wish to live in from such an amazing person

~`@kaz

Melinda · 3 months ago

Ok, I'm prepared for people to kill me, and attack me in all sorts of crazy scary fists. But when I heard this song, it reminded me of a book I read back in Junior high, its called....>.> <.<....The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith. Its about a boy who's turned into a vampire by the girl he loved during the Renaissance. She died by walking into the daylight, and we flash forward to modern day where he falls in love with a modern girl who looked like the Renaissance girl. Well, the girl (the main character) kept a diary about the exploits of gaining the boy (Is it enough to have some love. Small enough to slip in side a book.) Well, the girl dies and the whole song just reminds me of it. Now I'm officially a dork!

I loved this song so much I even made an image based on it!

insignifikunt · 3 months ago

Astronaut is my favourite off the album as well, in fact I think it's one of my all time favourite songs in the history of music in my life.

Female mechanic now on duty. · 3 months ago

I have the chills, Amanda. Thank you, thank you, for reminding me why I should strive to LISTEN instead of merely hearing.

Nomie · 3 months ago

The vamp makes me want to learn to play piano.

The coat makes me want to learn to sew.

Ren · 3 months ago

This song makes me cry so much.... it reminds me of my ex-bf. I remember when we went to your concert last december and he fell in love with you too!!
I had made a drawing of us based on this song for his bday but I didn't finish it and then we broke up.... ;___;

bmewenimgone · 3 months ago

Thank you! I am eagerly awaiting more blogs! I love your life...

trax · 3 months ago

Hi Amanda,

just wanted to ask, although it's probably been done before : is the piano intro to this song a reference to Blur's song "Sing" ? A good friend of mine pointed out the similarity a few months ago and I've been wondering ever since... Great song, by the way, one of my favourites.

Thanks !

Dragonsally · 3 months ago

Thank you for sharing all of that..and making your own rocket, that's just pure awesomeness.

This will add so much more depth to the song when I sing along to it now. ♥

Dragonsally · 3 months ago

Oh, and Astronaut was the ringtone on my phone, (you can't ignore it) but was defeating the purpose as I wanted to hear the song, not answer the phone!

jera · 3 months ago

I really adore this song. It is one of my favorites. Listening to it actually made me think of my struggle with Anorexia...The right arm is the one that people with Ana wear their red "support bracelets" and you never really get what you want, no matter how skinny you get. It gets harder to pretend and...this song just fits.
It is really a beautiful piece.

coppeliad · 3 months ago

I'm so happy I took the time to read this. Sometimes I don't bother to read all the blogs I come across in any given day, but Astronaut has to be my favorite song of yours yet. It is so raw and full of emotion and the panicked, abandoned woman really shines here. I feel inspired by it every time I listen. It's wonderful to know the story and the unintentional back history behind it. Thank you.

rhyskka · 3 months ago

Astronaut is my favourite song from all your solo things. I learned to play it on the piano and I was told that the beginning of the song sounds really orchestra-like even if you play it just with piano. I must confess, I don't like the song much when you play it live alone, but I was lucky to hear you play it with a band in Russia, and I literally cried in the beginning of the song. I never cried at the gigs before!
This blog is awesome, I can't wait to hear other stories!

Mili · 3 months ago

I was barely 5 when Challenger exploded. I remember watching it on the news (on the other side of the Iron Curtain) with my grandmother. It's the first memory I have of a "world event".

Emerendia · 3 months ago

Thank you for sharing yourself with us. :-)

annui · 3 months ago

I always wondered if the line "and you may be acquainted with the night" had anything to do with my favorite Robert Frost poem. Love, love, love this song.

Greta · 3 months ago

I cried when I finished reading this.
Thank you with all of my heart. This blog was what I needed to finally get to work choreographing this song, and I can already tell you that it is the best work that I have or will have made in all of my life.
I love that you reference the description of electrons and I love the multiple layers of this song.
I love the photo of you with desi.
Thank you.
Warmest wishes
Greta

robynrees · 3 months ago

I was living and working in Memphis TN, when Challenger blew up. I had spent many years prior in Cocoa Beach Fl, back as far as the Gemini launches. They would light the sky for miles and miles, and shake the bottles off the bar where I worked - 30 miles away.
We were watching the Challenger launch in the break room in Memphis, and I remember everyone gasping in delight at the explosion - they didn't know it was WRONG. They thought it was all part of the show - maybe a stage separation or an extra blast of power. I'd seen enough launches to know it was bad....
There were pieces falling on the beaches.....no one talks about that. They didn't show it on the news.
Your song is sadder than you know. And more beautiful.

Ryan_Anas · 3 months ago

Wow! Being able to hear about how this song came together is truly a gift. Thank you so much for taking the time and having to courage to go into such deep and personal parts of your life and your process with us. It's amazing how you've transmuted so much pain and so many details from various parts of your experience along a single thread.
I'm sorry that your heart was broken. xo

Xenjn · 3 months ago

There are no words to describe a song like Astronaut. I just know that it changed my life, over and over again. And late at night I like to go out, blasting the song and singing it at the top of my lungs, watching the stars, not caring if I'm disturbing the people around me who are asleep in their beds.

...You know, ironically enough, every time I listen to that song at night I see a shooting star.

I basically have your entire discography, I love you more then life itself. And in no way do I exaggerate when I say Astronaut is one of, if not, your most powerful song yet.

Thank you for sharing it with the world.

Thank you for sharing it with me. I need it, and I don't know what I'd do without it.

Shiny · 3 months ago

this blog made me really sad. i always wondered why you had the rocket footage projected behind you; now i know. i, like prettymuch everyone else who commented, love this song (especially the last chorus)and i still feel overjoyed that i actually was able to meet you once- earlier this year in sydney, australia. you made my year :)

oh and the anniversary of my discovering AFP and the dresden dolls was last week. i've changed so much in my music taste, for the better naturally.

doubleuvalley · 3 months ago

this song is my favourite one of wkap. The feeling of this song is so unique ... I love it. The video fits perfectly =) Thanks amanda for describing the situations which made you write it . It's always interesting what kind of feelings/situtations made someone create art even though some people may interpretate the result differently

flegias · 3 months ago

flegias · 3 months ago

Thank you for this profound explanation. Awesome song and awesome video. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I've always considered "Astronaut" the other side of the coin compared to the old Bowie song "Space Oddity". Same story, different point of views.

RandomGit · 3 months ago

I love it when your songs speak of the true nature of experience. That Love isn't always some fairytale of hope or a pit of generic, trite sorrows. For me Astronaut is that sort of song that describes a love for someone whose core of attraction that draws you in is also what keeps you from drawing level with them. They are unattainable, the love is unrequited but yet you are unrelenting.

Such a perfect tragedy. Damn I hope you do another Australia tour soon.

David_Levine · 3 months ago

I loved this post so much Amanda! I love the song too, but Have to Drive is my WKAP favorite and the one that most often gets stuck in my head. It was stuck there for almost all of the 80 mile bike ride I took yesterday ... Thanks so much for sharing your nerd-tomboy photos with us, and for your touching memories of the Challenger disaster. I watched it unfold live with my 6- and 3-year old daughter and son and aged 10 years in 5 minutes.

Alan Arenque Incurtido · 3 months ago

Hi Amanda! well...I speak spanish and not much english...so I don´t understan a lot of things...but I just have to say I love the work you did with Michael Pope as a film director...well, bye
Hope you´re well...
Greetings from Mexico...
(and please say "hello" to Zoe for me, I love her music too, I´m finally learning to play cello)

Marcela Santos · 3 months ago

Astronaut was the first song I ever heard you sing, even before listening to The Dresden Dolls. It reminded me of all the love I've always wanted and couldn't have, it just kept randomly flying into space, like an astronaut.

Greetings from Mexico!

Kevin BettyWhite · 3 months ago

AMANDA FP..!!.. I was very excited to hear about the East Coast tour, but very disappointed to find that the Portland show is 21 & up.

I met you at after seeing With the Needle that Sings in her Heart, and I said, "AMANDA, COME TO MAINE AGAIN."

If I can't go to this one I have to go out of state. : O
I did it for the play, which was totally worth it, but..

WE NEVER HAVE CONCERTS IN Maine.

Love,
Kevin, who stole you a road sign.

Caitlin Nielsen · 3 months ago

I will re-created that jacket out of duct tape. It is delicious. this is probly my favorite song. The line" I wanna touch the back of your right arm," has so much meaning to me and so much emotion behind it. Beautiful song AFP, keep it up.