Songfacts®:

• At 39 minutes and 57 seconds, "Blue Room" is the longest song to reach the UK singles chart. The record is unlikely to be beaten as the chart compilers classify anything of 40 minutes or more as an album.
• The Orb's Alex Paterson and Thrash wrote "Blue Room" over five months in 1991-92. Assisting with the recording were bassist Jah Wobble, guitarist Steve Hillage, and keyboardist Miquette Giraudy. Wobble was the original bass player in Public Image Ltd. Hillage and Giraudy are romantic and musical partners (both were members of the progressive rock band Gong).
• "Blue Room" features a vocal riff by Aisha, sampled from her 1986 track "The Creator." Other samples include the beginning of Weather Report's "Mysterious Traveller," Sounds Of The Space Age - From Sputnik To Lunar Landing (Side A) and at the end, Marilyn Monroe's "Happy Birthday" serenade to President Kennedy.
• When The Orb "played" a three-minute edit of the single on Top Of The Pops, Paterson and Thrash dispensed with any pretense at musical performance, appearing without any instruments. As the song played in the background, they ruminated over a chess game while holding a fluffy toy sheep and cross while waving at the camera.
• The Orb included an edited version of "Blue Room" for U.F.Orb. At 17 minutes and 34 seconds, the ambient house track still comprises the double album's entire second side.
• The actual "Blue Room" is a hangar located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where the US government allegedly keeps the relics of a 1947 saucer crash outside Roswell, New Mexico. The Orb continued the song's alien theme throughout U.F.Orb.
• U.F.Orb topped the UK Albums Chart, making it The Orb's most successful record. Their second-best chart placing was their 1994 EP Pomme Fritz, which reached #6 on the UK albums chart.