Marbles You’re Gone Prog Some things you never see coming, and a latter-career hit single was probably one of those for Marillion. The choppy, rhythmic loop of – the lead track from 2004 album – reached No.7 on the UK’s Official Singles Chart, their first Top 10 since 1987’s .
(The Dutch, who like Marillion the way a cat likes cream, propelled it to No.8.) Quite the turnaround for a band who’d had to revert to crowdfunding their previous album, .
“It still didn’t stop people asking me about , though!” lead singer observes wryly. “We couldn’t believe it – you have this Top 10 hit and suddenly everyone gets excited and starts phoning you up. I haven’t changed; I haven’t done anything different, and now you’re all doing backflips because of a number on a chart? It’s very weird from the artist’s point of view.
“I remember someone from Radio 4’s programme wanted to talk to me suddenly, and one of his questions was, ‘Do you think motivating your friends to buy your record so you can have a hit single is a distortion of the marketplace?’ That was his question: ‘How dare you make this happen in spite of the BBC?’ As they certainly weren’t playing it. This ‘stay in your lane’ sort of vibe. That said, perhaps it was just a clever question to see what it would draw out? “The song itself was built on a loop, and not a conventional structure.
it came out of playing around with Logic. He wrote those sections on the computer with a keybo.