Songfacts®:

• This song is based on Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. Johnson told Billboard magazine: "There's a line in the book where [Huxley] says how much better things are and how much happier they are because of the soma - there's no need for headaches or mythology." (In the novel the soma is a popular dream-inducing drug, which provides an easy escape from the hassles of daily life).
• Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was an English writer of novels, essays, and verse. His most popular work was his 1932 science fiction novel Brave New World set in the year 632 AF, or After Ford. The book provides a frightening vision of the future whereby humans are mass-produced in laboratories and personal freedom is prevented by indoctrination and drugs.
• A song in a different genre, which was also inspired by the Huxley novel is heavy metal act Iron Maiden's "Brave New World." Other Huxley connections with rock music include Tool's 1994 track, "T.B.D.," which was based on the English writer's life and his painful heroin-filled death, and the band The Doors, who took name from Huxley's book about his experiments with the hallucinogenic drug mescalin, The Doors of Perception.