A Place Above

Album: To Love Is to Live (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is a track from Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth's debut solo album, To Love Is to Live. Beth's longtime partner and collaborator Johnny Hostile produced "A Place Above" along with the rest of the record.
  • Dark Knight and Peaky Blinders actor Cillian Murphy recites this solemn soliloquy. Jehnny Beth wanted a multiplicity of voices on the record (The xx's Romy Croft and Idles singer Joe Talbot also feature) and she'd heard Murphy was a fan of Savages.
  • Murphy delivered his monologue without hearing any music. "He has this intimacy about the way he says things," Beth told Q magazine. "He made it more personal."
  • After Beth met Peaky Blinders director Anthony Byrne backstage at an Idles show, he chose another To Love Is to Live track, "I'm A Man," to soundtrack an episode of the English-gangster period-piece TV series. They also got Cillian Murphy to star in the video for that song.

    Other music videos Murphy has appeared in include Feist's "The Water" and I Break Horses' "Winter Beats."

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