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Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Thu, Apr 18, 2024

Full version of Headlong Flight available for streaming online at RollingStone.com!

Wed, Apr 18, 2012@12:10PM | comments removed/disabled

[Exclusive Stream: Rush Return with Heavy 'Headlong Flight']

UPDATE - 4/19@9:20AM: There are several reports of radio stations already playing the radio edit of the track, and a few the full version. So much for Planet Rock's world premiere I guess.

UPDATE - 4/19@6:21AM: Sometime last night Rush posted the official tour dates as expected, but they also included an official video for Headlong Flight! The video is titled as the Official Lyric Video. It has a number of visuals that display the lyrics to the song interspersed with old performance video of Rush and some other steampunk visuals. Here it is:

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UPDATE - 4/18@7:51PM: Here's a much more entertaining, non-static YouTube video of the track courtesy hermy.

UPDATE - 4/18@3:28PM: The song is up on YouTube now too; you can listen to it here.

UPDATE - 4/18@3:17PM: John over at Cygnus-X1.net has posted the unconfirmed Headlong Flight lyrics based on listenings from the general Rush-fan collective. You can check them out at this link. Here's the chorus:

I stoke the fire on the big steel wheels
Steer the airship right across the stars
I learned to fight, I learned to love, I learned to feel
I wish that I could live it all again

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UPDATE - 4/18@12:44PM: From the Rolling Stone article:

"Headlong Flight," the first single from Rush's 20th studio album Clockwork Angels, is one of the trio's most hard-charging numbers in recent years. "'Headlong Flight' was one of those songs that was a joy to write and record from beginning to end," says frontman Geddy Lee. "Alex [Lifeson] and I had blast jamming in my home studio one day before the second leg of the Time Machine tour, and I did not revisit that jam until a year later. Alex and I assembled the song to be an instrumental and its original title was 'Take That Lampshade Off Yo Head!," but once we saw the lyrics Neil [Peart] had written, I knew that the spirit of the lyrics matched the instrumental perfectly and it was just a matter of making them fit and writing the melodies."

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The full 7:20-minute version of Headlong Flight is now available for streaming online at RollingStone.com! This comes as a surprise since we had been under the impression that the track wouldn't be released until tomorrow. In fact, UK digital radio station Planet Rock put out a press release this morning announcing that they'd be playing a world exclusive premiere of the track tomorrow at 2:12PM (9:12 AM EST). Perhaps that just refers to the radio premiere. The full 7:20-version will be available for purchase as a download next Tuesday, April 24th in the US/Canada; April 22nd in the UK; and Friday, April 20th in parts of Europe. You can listen to the track on RollingStone.com at this link.