James LaBrie Details The Elon Musk Reference In Dream Theater's 'The Alien'
Dream Theater's James LaBrie recently talked about how he got inspired to write 'The Alien,' the first track on the band's most recent album 'A View From The Top Of The World.'
Dream Theatre released their 15th album, 'A View From The Top Of The World' on October 22. The album contains two long songs that start and end the record. Its first track, 'The Alien,' written by the band's vocalist James LaBrie, explores the theme of how the world's time is running out and humanity should look beyond our world for an escape.
These futuristic lyrics were inspired by a podcast Elon Musk had partaken. In the podcast, Musk talked about how humans should think outside the box to get out of the world they helped destroy. He further spoke about outer space and species that haven't been explored yet.
LaBrie was introduced to this podcast by his son, and he started taking notes to use in his songwriting. He started to question the existence of other species and their perspective on humans, which then became the nine-minute and 30-second song 'The Alien.'
Here is the story of how LaBrie wrote 'The Alien:'
"Well, lyrically, I was inspired by my son, who turned me on to a podcast that Joe Rogan had done with Elon Musk. Musk was talking about the whole Mars exploration and terraforming, and eventually, the human species as we know, the only way that we're going to be infinite and go on to survive is if we start thinking outside of this planet because eventually, we're going to outgrow it or strip it of all its other resources.
We're kind of a destructive species, aren't we? Anyway, it was a three-hour podcast, and I listened to it, and I was extremely inspired at the moment. So I did a ton of jot notes, I wrote down, and then just from there, I remember hearing this was actually the first song that we wrote for the album, 'The Alien,' and I knew that I wanted to do that.
I just knew that I wanted to do the lyric. I thought with that mindset. That song just has a very spacey, almost like a movie soundtrack kind of feel to it to me. And so, I just thought of something that was more sci-fi. But instead, we become the aliens, and we were out there in the universe terraforming, and maybe other planets that are inhabited already would see us as we see or as we think when we think of aliens."
You can watch him explaining the lyrics below.
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