Silence (song)
Encyclopedia
"Silence" is a song by the Canadian
electronic music
group Delerium
. It was co-written by Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan
, who is featured as the vocalist on the track.
Over the years, it has been hailed as one of the greatest trance
songs of all time, twelve years after its initial release, and still plays in clubs to this day.
, with the characteristic synthetic
instrumentation of the more melodic
side of ambient music
— though including darker overtones, such as the prominently featured Gregorian chant
(Gloria in Excelsis Deo
). This last element often invites comparison to popular ambient/new age
/world music
projects of the 1990s like Enigma
and Deep Forest
who routinely sample chant
s from various ethnicities
worldwide, though in contrast such vocals featured on Karma were all original recordings.
Although the original song did receive Canadian radio airplay in 1997, it was not released as a single until 1999, two years after the release of Karma, though it was only the Airscape Remix which received airplay at this time, rather than the more downtempo original version. The single prominently included remix
es by DJ Tiësto
, and Fade, which significantly boosted the song's proliferation through club
play (particularly by influential DJs
such as Paul Oakenfold
) as evidenced by the single's positions on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play
charts.
As a consequence, the song was largely promoted
as an uptempo vocal trance
song, which then influenced the marketing of the next several Delerium singles as well. Unlike most of its successors, however, "Silence" also broke into the adult top 40
radio format
due to the song's club success, and through radio airplay
the original version received mainstream
awareness relatively greater than the remixes among club patrons.
The accompanying music video
, directed by the directors collective Twobigeyes, was released in 2000 and was set to the Airscape remix. It has repeatedly been listed within the top 100 Ibiza
anthems ever on online messageboards and, more recently, on MTV
. The video was filmed on location in Pembrokeshire, Wales UK. The main locations are Newgale Beach, Marloes Sands and "The Blue Lagoon" in Abereiddy.
"Silence" was the opening track on the 1999 Brokedown Palace soundtrack
.
A remixed, uptempo eurodance
cover version was recorded by Paul Nineham a.k.a. Double Dutch, appearing on the 2002 dance compilation Dancemania Speed 9
with the name "Delirious". The Airscape Remix was featured in Dance Dance Revolution
: EXTREME2.
remix is the most central, as the version included on the Best Of
compilation released preceding the single. The other new remix was by Filterheadz
; this version subsequently, in 2006, became popularly mislabelled as the nonexistent "Trentemøller
2006 Remix".
2008 saw yet another remix of this track, this time by German DJs Niels van Gogh
and Thomas Gold.
In 2009 the song was covered by the United Kingdom gothic rock band, esOterica, on the album The Riddle.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
group Delerium
Delerium
Delerium is a band from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, formed in 1987, originally as a side project of the influential industrial music act, Front Line Assembly...
. It was co-written by Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan
Sarah McLachlan
Sarah Ann McLachlan, OC, OBC is a Canadian musician, singer and songwriter. Known for her emotional ballads and mezzo-soprano vocal range, as of 2006, she has sold over 40 million albums worldwide. McLachlan's best-selling album to date is Surfacing, for which she won two Grammy Awards and four...
, who is featured as the vocalist on the track.
Over the years, it has been hailed as one of the greatest trance
Trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
songs of all time, twelve years after its initial release, and still plays in clubs to this day.
Song
The original album version and subsequent radio edit of the song had a much slower tempo than the more well-known remixes and was essentially structured like a pop songPop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, with the characteristic synthetic
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
instrumentation of the more melodic
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
side of ambient music
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
— though including darker overtones, such as the prominently featured Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
(Gloria in Excelsis Deo
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
"Gloria in excelsis Deo" is the title and beginning of a hymn known also as the Greater Doxology and the Angelic Hymn. The name is often abbreviated to Gloria in Excelsis or simply Gloria.It is an example of the psalmi idiotici "Gloria in excelsis Deo" (Latin for "Glory to God in the highest")...
). This last element often invites comparison to popular ambient/new age
New Age music
New Age music is music of various styles intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments, and is often...
/world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
projects of the 1990s like Enigma
Enigma (musical project)
Enigma is an electronic musical project founded in Germany by Michael Cretu, David Fairstein and Frank Peterson in 1990. The Romanian-born Cretu conceived the Enigma project while working in Germany, but has based his recording studio A.R.T. Studios in Ibiza, Spain, since the early 1990s until May...
and Deep Forest
Deep Forest
Deep Forest is a musical group consisting of two French musicians, Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet. They compose a style of world music, sometimes called ethnic electronica, mixing ethnic with electronic sounds and dance beats or chillout beats...
who routinely sample chant
Chant
Chant is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes to highly complex musical structures Chant (from French chanter) is the rhythmic speaking or singing...
s from various ethnicities
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
worldwide, though in contrast such vocals featured on Karma were all original recordings.
Although the original song did receive Canadian radio airplay in 1997, it was not released as a single until 1999, two years after the release of Karma, though it was only the Airscape Remix which received airplay at this time, rather than the more downtempo original version. The single prominently included remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
es by DJ Tiësto
Tiësto
Tijs Michiel Verwest, , known as Tiësto , is a Dutch musician, DJ and record producer of electronic dance music. Although he has used many aliases in the past, he is best known for his work as DJ Tiësto...
, and Fade, which significantly boosted the song's proliferation through club
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
play (particularly by influential DJs
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
such as Paul Oakenfold
Paul Oakenfold
Paul Mark Oakenfold is a British record producer and a trance DJ.-Early Career: 1979–84:Paul Oakenfold's career was set to be a chef, after having hopes of becoming part of a band. He describes his early life as a "bedroom deejay" in a podcasted interview with Vancouver's 24 Hours, stating he grew...
) as evidenced by the single's positions on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play
Hot Dance Club Play
The Hot Dance Club Songs chart is a weekly national survey of the songs that are most popular in U.S. dance clubs...
charts.
As a consequence, the song was largely promoted
Promotion (marketing)
Promotion is one of the four elements of marketing mix . It is the communication link between sellers and buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing, or persuading a potential buyer's purchasing decision....
as an uptempo vocal trance
Vocal trance
Vocal trance is a subgenre of trance music that focuses on vocals and melodies. The sub-genre came into existence in the early 1990s, when trance was still developing...
song, which then influenced the marketing of the next several Delerium singles as well. Unlike most of its successors, however, "Silence" also broke into the adult top 40
Adult contemporary music
Adult contemporary music is a broad style of popular music that ranges from lush 1950s and 1960s vocal music to predominantly ballad-heavy music with varying degrees of rock influence, as well as a radio format that plays such music....
radio format
Radio format
A radio format or programming format not to be confused with broadcast programming describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. Radio formats are frequently employed as a marketing tool, and constantly evolve...
due to the song's club success, and through radio airplay
Airplay (song)
Airplay is a term used in the radio broadcasting industry to state how frequently a song is being played on over-the-air radio stations. For example, a song which is being played several times every day would be classed as receiving a large amount of airplay...
the original version received mainstream
Mainstream
Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....
awareness relatively greater than the remixes among club patrons.
The accompanying music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
, directed by the directors collective Twobigeyes, was released in 2000 and was set to the Airscape remix. It has repeatedly been listed within the top 100 Ibiza
Ibiza
Ibiza or Eivissa is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea 79 km off the coast of the city of Valencia in Spain. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous community of Spain. With Formentera, it is one of the two Pine Islands or Pityuses. Its largest cities are Ibiza...
anthems ever on online messageboards and, more recently, on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
. The video was filmed on location in Pembrokeshire, Wales UK. The main locations are Newgale Beach, Marloes Sands and "The Blue Lagoon" in Abereiddy.
"Silence" was the opening track on the 1999 Brokedown Palace soundtrack
Brokedown Palace: Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Brokedown Palace: Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album for the film Brokedown Palace, released by Island Records on August 10, 1999 .-Track listing:...
.
A remixed, uptempo eurodance
Eurodance
Eurodance is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the late 1980s or early 1990s primarily in Europe. It combines many elements from House, Techno, Hi-NRG and especially Italo-Disco...
cover version was recorded by Paul Nineham a.k.a. Double Dutch, appearing on the 2002 dance compilation Dancemania Speed 9
Dancemania Speed
Dancemania Speed is a sub-series of Toshiba EMI's Dancemania compilation series. This series features faster, further remixed versions of recordings from previously released Dancemania albums or faster remixed covers of various famous songs...
with the name "Delirious". The Airscape Remix was featured in Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution, abbreviated DDR, and previously known as Dancing Stage in Europe and Australasia, is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution is the...
: EXTREME2.
Re-releases
2004 saw a new release of the single as "Silence 2004", though no one song actually bears that title — the new single contained only remixes, both old and new. Of these, the new Above & BeyondAbove & Beyond (band)
Above & Beyond are a British trance music group formed in 2000 and consists of the members Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness, and Finnish Paavo Siljamäki. They have their own record label Anjunabeats, which releases trance and progressive music, and they also host their own weekly radio show Trance...
remix is the most central, as the version included on the Best Of
The Best Of (Delerium album)
The Best Of is a compilation album by Delerium, released on Nettwerk in 2004. The album collects most of the band's singles up to this point...
compilation released preceding the single. The other new remix was by Filterheadz
Filterheadz
Filterheadz are a Techno DJ and producer duo from Belgium. Formed by brothers Bert and Maarten Wilmaers.- History :In the mid-1980s, the Filterheadz made their first musical steps by playing in a pop band. Bert played guitar, Maarten was a drummer...
; this version subsequently, in 2006, became popularly mislabelled as the nonexistent "Trentemøller
Trentemøller
Anders Trentemøller is a Danish electronic music producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Copenhagen, Denmark.-History:...
2006 Remix".
2008 saw yet another remix of this track, this time by German DJs Niels van Gogh
Niels van Gogh
Niels van Gogh is a German DJ and producer from Augsburg.His style is progressive clubsound. Niels van Gogh started his career in 1994 and plays in Europe and all around the world, e.g. in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Thailand, South Africa, France, Australia...
and Thomas Gold.
In 2009 the song was covered by the United Kingdom gothic rock band, esOterica, on the album The Riddle.