Songfacts®:

• Johnson is an enthusiastic eco-warrior and he explained to the Sun newspaper January 25, 2008 how this song reflected his concerns: "'Sleep Through The Static' is about how we have the ability to turn off the war whenever we please. Or you can use a plastic bag to bring home all your groceries. You throw it in the waste and then you don't see what happens but it sits there for 2,000 years. A lot of things are out of sight, out of mind for us and it's easier to 'sleep through the static'."
• Johnson told jambase.com about the inspiration for this song: "That whole song actually came pretty easy. It was a stream of consciousness kinda thing. I saw a sticker on a car and it said, 'Support Our Troops.' There was another sticker next to it about Jesus. I thought to myself, 'What would Jesus think if he saw this?' I was trying to see it objectively and not too be cynical about it. He was human and lived here on Earth at some point. What would he think about a bumper sticker with his name on it and right next to 'Support Our Troops'?' Now that got me thinking. There is nothing wrong with supporting our troops, but when supporting our troops becomes synonymous with supporting this war.. I have a friend who had a sticker that said, 'Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home,' and somebody took it off their car. You get labeled as being unpatriotic if you think the troops should come home. I started thinking one of Jesus' famous lines, 'Love your enemy.' It would be interesting if Jesus could tell us what he really thinks. So I had the first line, 'C'mon Jesus/ Tell us what you really think/ That's no way to treat an enemy.' From there the whole song came out, even though that first line didn't make it into the song."
• The album sold 375,000 copies in the US in it's debut week, more than any other Johnson album in it's first 7 days. 37% of the album's total, 139,000 units, were digital downloads, making it the biggest sales week for a digital set. The previous record holder was Kanye West's Graduation, which moved 133,000 digital albums in its first seven days in 2007. It also topped the UK album charts in its debut week, a rather swifter move to the top than Johnson's previous UK chart topper, his 2005 album In Between Dreams, which took 44 weeks to reach # in March 2006.