I'm Aquarius

Album: Love Letters (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from Metronomy's Love Letters album finds Joe Mount crooning a tale of doomed romance. "I've seen our stars and there's nothing aligning," he laments. The song was premiered on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show on November 11, 2013.
  • Continuing the astral theme, the song was made available through an astronomy app called The Night Sky app, which was activated when the user found the Aquarius constellation in the sky. It was made available exclusively for one week to existing and new users of the app.
  • The video was directed by Edouard Salier, who previously helmed Justice's "Civilization" music clip. It finds frontman Joseph Mount encountering a goddess and hairless cats on an alien planet. "It's so hard to create an original science fiction movie since the whole genre's been mopped around in every direction," said Salier. "I wanted to do something very slow and contemplative, taking place in a very colourful and artistic universe."
  • Joe Mount told NME the background to this song: "I'm a Virgo," he said, "but there's a nice tradition of these songs from the 60s when astrology was a really cool thing to sing about, like, 'Aquarius,' (by The 5th Dimension), that I wanted to be part of."
  • Mount expanded on the song to NME: "Astrology, I don't believe in," he said, laughing. "I like spiritual people, I like people that believe that Jupiter is doing something that is relevant to them. I like how self-centered that is!"

    "I wrote it as a soulful pop song and never imagined I would be the one to sing it." Mount continued. "I wanted to write a word the song that was about a breakup and someone basically blaming it on the planets, not on the fact that they are not very good in relationships."
  • Mount sent the song to Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts, who he worked with on her debut solo album Cinderella Eyes. He told The Sun: "I realise I'm lucky now that I got to keep it. It's a song that stayed with me and it works so well on this album."

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