Songfacts®:

• Sarah Brightman recorded this ode to the element of water with producer Frank Peterson (Ofra Haza, Andrea Bocelli). She sings of how water travels through rivers, falls from the skies and is the source of life.
• Brightman also recorded another version, "The Second Element I," which is a love song. "The Second Element II" is more of a stripped-down acoustic affair.
• This is the closing track of Dive, which has a loose concept of nautical references. It was the first Brightman record produced by Peterson, who continued collaborating with the soprano singer up to and including her 2008 album Symphony.
• Frank Peterson wrote the song with Thomas Schwarz, who played guitar on the album, and Matthias Meissner, who contributed keyboards. Peterson, Schwarz and Meissner co-founded Gregorian, a German act that performs Gregorian chant-inspired versions of modern pop and rock songs.
• Renaissance rock band Blackmore's Night covered the song for their 2021 album Nature's Light. Vocalist Candice Night told Songfacts in a track by track:
  
  "Of course, we're very connected with elements, with earth, with nature, with fire, with water, with air, with the moon, with the sun, all of this going back to Nature's Light again. So, we thought that it would be a perfect home to do a song that was so entwined with our theory of Nature's Light and the element of water. And that song wound up being the 'Second Element,' which was the water element and so vital and magical to us and to the world around us."
• Jeffrey Pickett (Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir, The Skyjacker) produced and directed Blackmore Night's video for the song.