Echo & the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon

Fate. Up against your will. Through the thick and thin. He will wait until you give yourself to him.

Album: Ocean Rain [4th album]
Recorded: Bath, England, Liverpool, England and Paris, France
Genre: Jangle Pop, New Wave
Single Release: January 20th 1984 [lead single]
Album Release: May 4th 1984
Length: 5.47
Producer: Echo & the Bunnymen
Vocalist: Ian McCulloch [age 25]
Label: Korova

Music Video


Live in Liverpool from 1984

Charts, Streams & Sales

Ireland (singles): #7
UK (singles): #9
UK (singles): Certified gold
Spotify: Over 170 million
YouTube Music: Over 70 million

Credits

12 string guitar, autoharp, bass, cello, drums, guitar, keyboards

Details

• Recorded separately from the other songs on 'Ocean Rain'. It was the last track to be finished for the album. 
• The band wrote the guitar riffs first.
• Singer Ian McCulloch has said that he had already spent days writing the lyrics but didn't have a chorus. One morning he woke up and the full chorus was in his mind, almost as if someone had put it there while he was sleeping.
  
  
• The song is about death. A fate that awaits us all despite our will to avoid it. "I know it must be. The killing time, unwillingly mine." Even though death is inevitable it is still a rare occurence because it can only happen to each of us once. "Under a blue moon" is a rare event and is the first lyric in the song.
  
  In verse two the singer comes into contact with the angel of death. He meets him at night as night is synonymous with death. Our psychology evolved in ancient history when predators would come at night and drag people into the woods. "So cruelly you kissed me" a kiss is normally a nice thing but the kiss of death is cruel. "Your lips a magic world" because it takes the singer away from the material world into a magical one. "Your sky all hung with jewels" the stars in the sky shine in the same way as jewels. "Your sky" suggests that the singer is possibly speaking to God or a God like figure.
  
  
• Features prominently on the soundtrack of Donnie Darko (2001). The band allowed the song to be used for a one off payment of £3000.
  
• There is a cover by Pavement.
  
  
• "I never really tell people what the meaning is to all the songs because that surely spoils their journey. When they listen to something like 'The Killing Moon,' there are so many different ideas of what that is about. To me it's like to be or not to be moments. Every now and then and I go, 'Wow! That was like some kind of scripture for me, that song.' It doesn't mean it's about God, but it's my parable that I had to write for myself first, but it seems lots of people see 'The Killing Moon' as a special song." (Ian McCulloch talking to songfacts)
  
  
  
  Artwork