Floating into the Night

Floating into the Night is the debut studio album by American singer Julee Cruise. It was released on September 12, 1989, by Warner Bros. Records, and features compositions and production by Angelo Badalamenti and film director David Lynch. Songs from the album were featured in Lynch's projects Blue Velvet (1986), Industrial Symphony No. 1 (1990), and Twin Peaks (1990–1991).

Floating into the Night
A porcelain doll floating against a black background. Pink block text with wide kerning below reads "Julee Cruise"; grey block text placed below reads "Floating", followed by gold block text reading "into the Night".
Studio album by
Julee Cruise
ReleasedSeptember 12, 1989 (1989-09-12)
StudioExcalibur Sound (New York City)
Genre
Length47:56
LabelWarner Bros.
Producer
Julee Cruise chronology
Floating into the Night
(1989)		 The Voice of Love
(1993)
Singles from Floating into the Night
  1. "Falling"
    Released: 1990
  2. "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart"
    Released: 1990

The album peaked at number 74 on the US Billboard 200 following the success of the Twin Peaks TV series in 1990. Lead single "Falling" reached the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number seven and spending 12 weeks in total on the chart.

Background

Filmmaker David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti's collaboration with Cruise first came about during the scoring for Lynch's 1986 film Blue Velvet, in which a key scene was intended to feature This Mortal Coil's version of "Song to the Siren" by Tim Buckley. With the rights to the song proving prohibitively expensive, it was suggested that Badalamenti compose a pop song in the same style and recruit a vocalist with a haunting, ethereal voice. Badalamenti recommended Cruise, who had sung in a New York theater workshop Badalamenti had produced. The result was the track "Mysteries of Love". Lynch and Badalamenti were impressed with the results, and elected to record subsequent tracks with Cruise.[1]

Composition

Floating into the Night was produced and written by Badalamenti and Lynch; Badalamenti composed the music and Lynch wrote the lyrics.[2] Cruise initially regarded herself as "a Broadway belter" and had a reputation for letting "angry and aggressive emotions power her work," but Lynch "felt that Cruise had a 'soft, sad side'" and encouraged her to sing in a softer tone and in a higher register; Cruise's vocal style on Floating into the Night has been often regarded as "ethereal"[3] and drawn comparisons to Elizabeth Fraser on the earlier releases by the Cocteau Twins.[1][4] Cruise's vocals on Floating into the Night feature heavy use of digital reverb.[5] Early recording sessions were difficult until Cruise heard her vocals treated with effects, upon which she recognized that Badalamenti was creating "mood pieces", and also took to Lynch's lyrics.[1] Nonetheless, she expressed concern about the album's sound, stating that:

I wasn't quite sure how the hell we were going to pull it off. One night I played some demos for my husband's friend and his wife, and she said, "white wine Muzak." Aaaahh! I took it home for Christmas — and everyone in my family hated it. They were like, "What are you singing about?" One of my lawyers at the time said, "This is a novelty." I said, "Like Tiny Tim?"

According to Lynch, 40 songs were written for the album in total, with the final track listing including 10 tracks.[6] Badalamenti noted that "when [the album] came out, radio stations said they had no slots for it. Is it pop? Not really. Is it R&B? Certainly not. What is it? Even the more avant-garde stations found it unusual, so it was difficult getting airplay."[1] Floating into the Night has been characterized as a dream pop album,[1][7][8] with heavy elements of jazz and traditional jazz instrumentation;[9][10] Rolling Stone considered Floating into the Night as a definitive development of the dream pop sound, describing how the album "added depth to [the genre]" and "gave the genre its synthy sheen", particularly on the track "Mysteries of Love".[1]

Release

Floating into the Night was released on September 12, 1989 on Warner Bros. Records,[7] although the album was originally set for release in late April.[9] It was originally issued on CD, LP and cassette.[11] Two singles were released from the album: "Falling" and "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart".[12] Floating into the Night has since been reissued on several occasions. The album received a CD reissue in Europe in October 1998,[13] a 180-gram LP repressing by Plain Recordings in the United States in October 2014 and a separate 180-gram LP repressing by Music on Vinyl in Europe in February 2015.[14][15]

Tracks from Floating into the Night were used in other projects by Lynch. "Mysteries of Love" had been previously featured in Blue Velvet.[16] "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", "Into the Night", "I Float Alone" and "The World Spins" were performed in the 1990 Lynch production Industrial Symphony No. 1.[17] "Falling", "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", "Into the Night", "The Nightingale" and "The World Spins" appeared in Twin Peaks, a television series co-created by Lynch. Lynch's lyrics on the album have been the subject of analysis from fans and academic studies of the series. In The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, academic John Richardson said that Cruise's considerable use of reverb makes her sound as if she sings "from a distance that clearly parallels the distance between the other world that [Twin Peaks character] Laura Palmer has fallen into and the primary diegetic world of the other characters"; he considered the lyrics to "Falling"—an instrumental version of which was used as the theme song to the series—as "reinforc[ing] this impression since they can easily be understood as representing Laura's point of view".[5] Cruise, however, considers Lynch's lyrics to have been written about his then-partner, Italian actress and model Isabella Rossellini.[3]

"The World Spins" was featured on the soundtrack to the 2003 film The Company.[18]

Reception

Critical response
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[7]
The Boston Phoenix[19]
Chicago Sun-Times[20]
NME8/10[21]
Orlando Sentinel[22]
Pitchfork9.0/10[23]
Q[24]
Record Mirror5/5[25]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[26]
The Village VoiceB−[27]

Floating into the Night has received widespread critical acclaim.[28] Stuart Bailie of NME praised it as "an immense study of wonderment and near-perfection."[21] In a short feature article in Spin, Scott Cohen likened the album to "a dark movie with no film footage, just a haunting voice, bizarre dialogue and vivid atmospherics", and described Cruise's vocals as "scary and beautiful".[29] Q included Floating into the Night in its year-end list of the "50 Best Albums of 1990".[30] However, the album garnered a mixed review from The Village Voice editor Robert Christgau, who said that "when admirers claim [Cruise] sounds best in a dark room at three in the morning, I wonder whether she puts them to sleep too."[27] In the 1992 Rolling Stone Album Guide, J. D. Considine wrote that "Cruise comes across as a sort of post-modern Claudine Longet—an amusing concept, to be sure, but hardly worth an entire album."[26]

Writing a retrospective review for AllMusic, Ned Raggett referred to Floating into the Night as "more or less [the] unofficial soundtrack [to] Twin Peaks" and added that "the combination of Cruise's sweet, light tones, Lynch's surprisingly affecting lyrics … and Angelo Badalamenti's combination of retro styles and modern ambience, is a winner throughout. The feeling is one of a 50s jukebox suddenly plunged into a time warp, dressed with extra sparkle and with a just-sleepy-enough, narcotic feeling."[7] Pitchfork critic Sam Sodomsky called the album "one of dream pop's chief benchmarks", while also noting that it "captured something important about dreams that plenty of other artists in the genre have ignored ... Cruise and her collaborators also had the ability to shake you awake, to twist an image that should be pretty into something broken and grotesque."[23] In 2010 Pitchfork included "Falling" at number 146 on its staff list of "The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s"; Tom Ewing said that "[the song] catches you with its dreamy, echo-drenched gentility—like Les Paul and Mary Ford inventing shoegaze in 1961—and inside is one of the decade's simplest and warmest love songs."[31] Floating into the Night was ranked at number 24 on Fact's 2013 list of "The 100 Best Albums of the 1980s",[32] and at number 67 on Pitchfork's 2018 list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s".[8]

Commercial performance

Following the breakout success of Twin Peaks, Floating into the Night peaked at number 74 on the US Billboard 200 on June 30, 1990,[33] nine months after its release. In Canada, the album peaked at number 27 for two weeks in August 1990, and returned four weeks later for two weeks at number 29. In total, it was on the Canadian charts for 30 weeks.[34] In 1991 the album placed on several international album charts, peaking at number 21 on the Australian Albums Chart[35] number 11 on the New Zealand Albums Chart and number 36 on the Swedish Albums Chart.[36][37]

Despite not placing on the UK Albums Chart, Floating into the Night's lead single "Falling" reached the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number seven and spending 12 weeks in total on the chart;[38] "Falling" was also a moderate commercial success in several international territories, peaking in the top 10 of singles charts in Ireland,[39] Norway and Sweden, and reaching the number one spot in Australia.[40] In February 2012, Floating into the Night was certified Silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), denoting shipments in excess of 60,000 units in the United Kingdom.[41]

Track listing

All lyrics are written by David Lynch; all music is composed by Angelo Badalamenti

No.TitleLength
1."Floating"4:51
2."Falling"5:45
3."I Remember"4:11
4."Rockin' Back Inside My Heart"5:45
5."Mysteries of Love"4:27
6."Into the Night"4:42
7."I Float Alone"4:33
8."The Nightingale"4:54
9."The Swan"2:28
10."The World Spins"6:38
Total length:47:56

Personnel

All personnel credits adapted from Floating into the Night's album notes.[2]

Charts
Chart performance for Floating into the Night
Chart (1990–1991) Peak
position
Australian Albums (ARIA)[35] 21
Canada Top Albums/CDs (RPM)[42] 27
Finland (Suomen virallinen albumlista)[43] 30
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[36] 11
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[37] 36
US Billboard 200[33] 74

Certifications
Certifications for Floating into the Night
Region CertificationCertified units/sales
United Kingdom (BPI)[41] Silver 60,000^

^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

References
  1. Grow, Kory (July 25, 2014). "Dream Team: The Semi-Mysterious Story Behind the Music of 'Twin Peaks'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  2. Floating into the Night (Album notes). Julee Cruise. Warner Bros. Records. 1989. 925 859-1.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  3. Olson, Greg (2008). David Lynch: Beautiful Dark. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press. p. 586. ISBN 978-0-8108-5917-3.
  4. McKenna, Kristine (August 20, 1989). "A Real Multi-Media Kind of Guy: David Lynch, artist in many forms, tells his tales of Hollywood after 'Blue Velvet'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  5. Richardson, John (2004). "Laura and Twin Peaks: Postmodern Paraody and the Musical Reconstruction of the Absent Femme Fatale". In Sheen, Erica; Davison, Annette (eds.). The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. London: Wallflower Press. pp. 88–89. ISBN 978-1-9033-6485-7.
  6. Barney, Richard A.; Lynch, David (2009). David Lynch: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-6047-3236-8.
  7. Raggett, Ned. "Floating into the Night – Julee Cruise". AllMusic. Retrieved August 11, 2023.
  8. Pitchfork Staff (September 10, 2018). "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s". Pitchfork. p. 7. Retrieved April 25, 2023. It served as a foundation for the misty dream pop of Cruise's debut album...
  9. Staff writer(s) (April 1989). "Talking All That Jazz". Spin. Vol. 5, no. 1. p. 24. Retrieved May 28, 2022.
  10. Robins, Ira A., ed. (1991). The Trouser Press Album Guide (4th ed.). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-0203-6361-3.
  11. "Floating into the Night – Julee Cruise | Releases". AllMusic. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  12. "Julee Cruise | Discography". AllMusic. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
  13. Floating into the Night (Album notes). Julee Cruise. Warner Bros. Records. 1998. 7599-25859-2.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  14. Staff writer(s) (November 10, 2014). "Julee Cruise's Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch-produced Floating Into The Night reissued on vinyl". Fact. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  15. "Julee Cruise – Floating Into The Night". Music on Vinyl. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  16. Lynch, David; Rodley, Chris (2005). Lynch on Lynch (Revised ed.). New York: Faber and Faber. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-5712-2018-2.
  17. Badalamenti, Angelo; Lynch, David (1990). Industrial Symphony No. 1 (VHS). Warner Reprise Video. 38179-3.
  18. "The Company [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] – Original Soundtrack". AllMusic. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
  19. Guterman, Jimmy (November 17–23, 1989). "Off the Record". The Boston Phoenix. Vol. 18, no. 46. sec. 3, p. 34. Retrieved May 28, 2022.
  20. McLeese, Don (September 25, 1989). "Julee Cruise, 'Floating into the Night' (Warner Bros.)". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved March 11, 2017.
  21. Bailie, Stuart (February 3, 1990). "Shipping Gold". NME. p. 35.
  22. Henderson, Bill (October 5, 1990). "Angelo Badalamenti, Julee Cruise". Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  23. Sodomsky, Sam (August 9, 2023). "Julee Cruise: Floating Into the Night". Pitchfork. Retrieved August 9, 2023.
  24. "Julee Cruise: Floating into the Night". Q. Archived from the original on March 21, 2012. Retrieved May 28, 2022.
  25. Dee, Johnny (February 3, 1990). "Julee Cruise: Floating into the Night". Record Mirror. p. 15.
  26. Considine, J. D. (1992). "Julee Cruise". In DeCurtis, Anthony; Henke, James; George-Warren, Holly (eds.). The Rolling Stone Album Guide (3rd ed.). Random House. p. 171. ISBN 0-679-73729-4.
  27. Christgau, Robert (November 28, 1989). "Consumer Guide: Turkey Shoot". The Village Voice. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
  28. Jones, Dylan (2012). The Biographical Dictionary of Popular Music: From Adele to Ziggy, the Real A to Z of Rock and Roll. London: Bedford Square Books. p. 202. ISBN 978-1-4804-4872-8.
  29. Cohen, Scott (November 1989). "A Stranger Calling". Spin. Vol. 5, no. 8. p. 16. Retrieved May 28, 2022.
  30. Staff writer(s) (January 1991). "The 50 Best Albums of 1990". Q. No. 52.
  31. Ewing, Tom; et al. (August 31, 2010). "The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 150–101". Pitchfork. p. 1. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
  32. Lea, Tom; Morpurgo, Joseph; Kelly, Chris; et al. (June 24, 2013). "The 100 Best Albums of the 1980s". Fact. p. 78. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  33. "Julee Cruise Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Archived from the original on March 18, 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2020.
  34. "RPM Top 100 Albums - March 2, 1991" (PDF).
  35. "Australiancharts.com – Julee Cruise – Floating into the Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
  36. "Charts.nz – Julee Cruise – Floating into the Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved August 30, 2019.
  37. "Swedishcharts.com – Julee Cruise – Floating into the Night". Hung Medien. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
  38. "Julee Cruise | full Official Chart History". Official Charts Company. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  39. "Search the charts". The Irish Charts. Retrieved June 14, 2022.
  40. "Julee Cruise – Falling (Theme from Twin Peaks)". Hitparade (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
  41. "British album certifications – Julee Cruise – Floating into the Night". British Phonographic Industry. February 17, 2012. Retrieved June 14, 2022.
  42. "Top RPM Albums: Issue 1313". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved June 14, 2022.
  43. Pennanen, Timo (2021). "Julee Cruise". Sisältää hitin - 2. laitos Levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla 1.1.1960–30.6.2021 (PDF) (in Finnish). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. p. 54. Retrieved September 5, 2022.
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