Lifeline

Album: Sparks (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the first track to be released from English singer-songwriter Imogen Heap's fourth album. The singer outlined her plan to record one track over a period of several weeks every three months, with each song to be released as soon as it was finished, before eventually compiling them into a CD. Heap explained to Billboard magazine that she was unhappy with the painstaking process of creating a cohesive album in one burst. "For two years, I'm doing nothing but thinking about the album, and I can't rest and feel satisfied until I have it in my hands... and then it's the touring, and then it's the next project," she said. "I wanted to release a song every three months so I can keep a flow of being creative and have kind of small wins in releasing something commercially."
  • The song was pieced together by combining and mixing different sound snippets submitted by fans. Said Heap to Billboard: "Somebody's dishwasher door, somebody's bicycle wheel, somebody's egg in a bowl, somebody's cat, somebody's trumpet, have all ended up in some weird way on this song, and it's really been a great adventure."
  • The lyrics were inspired by the tsunami that ravaged Japan in 2011, with 900 sounds sent by Heap's fans from around the world forming the base of the tune. She told Billboard that "what was on everyone's minds was what's going on in Japan. At the time, the earthquake had just happened that weekend, and I'm very grateful that it was on their conscious minds, because I wanted to write a song about it but I was only going to write a song about these seeds that they put into this wordcloud."

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