The Innermost Light

Album: CousteauX (2017)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • The song is from the first Cousteau album following their 2005 split. When they re-formed, they did so under the name CousteauX (with a silent X), under legal pressure from the Jacques Cousteau Society. The song's jarring, tortured sound, with stabs of electric guitar cutting into stomping percussion, contrasts sharply against the other songs on the album, which are generally slower and more romantic.
  • According to Davey Ray Moor's Songfacts interview, "'The Innermost Light' was written with Carl Barât from The Libertines. He turned up for a songwriting session with that phrase. Carl borrowed it from a tattoo on his manager's arm that quoted Aleister Crowley, the Edwardian occultist of Led Zeppelin renown. Crowley used 'The Innermost Light' as a term to describe what others might call 'the soul,' or the inner spark of light that is our thoughts. Carl and I worked around ideas of light, and the quest for the innermost light in the eyes of a soulmate."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Sam Phillips

Sam PhillipsSongwriter Interviews

Collaborating with T Bone Burnett, Leslie Phillips changed her name and left her Christian label behind - Robert Plant, who recorded one of her songs on Raising Sand, is a fan.

Macabre Mother Goose: The Dark Side of Children's Songs

Macabre Mother Goose: The Dark Side of Children's SongsSong Writing

"London Bridge," "Ring Around the Rosie" and "It's Raining, It's Pouring" are just a few examples of shockingly morbid children's songs.

Dennis DeYoung

Dennis DeYoungSongwriter Interviews

Dennis DeYoung explains why "Mr. Roboto" is the defining Styx song, and what the "gathering of angels" represents in "Come Sail Away."

Goodbye, Hello: Ten Farewell Tour Fake-Outs

Goodbye, Hello: Ten Farewell Tour Fake-OutsSong Writing

The 10 biggest "retirement tours" that didn't take.

Randy Newman

Randy NewmanSongwriting Legends

Newman makes it look easy these days, but in this 1974 interview, he reveals the paranoia and pressures that made him yearn for his old 9-5 job.

Paul Williams

Paul WilliamsSongwriter Interviews

He's a singer and an actor, but as a songwriter Paul helped make Kermit a cultured frog, turned a bank commercial into a huge hit and made love both "exciting and new" and "soft as an easy chair."