The Greatest Show On Earth

Album: Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • The last track on Endless Forms Most Beautiful, this clocks in at 24 minutes, the longest Nightwish song to date. When HMV.com asked keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen how long it took to put it all together, he replied: "For some reason long songs are rather easy for me to write, so it didn't really take any longer than any other song on the album. The mixing process for just that one song took about two and a half weeks, though."
  • The song title is taken from a 2009 book by evolutionary biologist and atheist writer Richard Dawkins, concerning the evidence for biological evolution. Dawkins also contributes towards the album. Holopainen explained to HMV in March 2015: "I wrote him a letter a bit more than a year ago and explained the ideas we had for this album, mainly to do with evolution. Since one of the tracks would be named directly after one of his books, it felt like a perfect match to try to get him do some reciting on the album. He sent me an email a few weeks later accepting the invitation."

    "Later in 2014 we then recorded his parts at Hats Off Studios, Oxford. This is a huge honor for us, since Dawkins is one of our biggest heroes and his writings have been huge inspiration for the album."

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