If there’s a full moon in the sky, it usually means Peter Gabriel is releasing a new song. That’s how the musician unveiled the singles from his 2023 studio album “I/O”, and he’s doing the same now with its follow up, “O\I” (2026). The latest track made available to fans is “I Belong to the Sky”, the seventh song he has released from the album so far.
Hear the new Peter Gabriel song “I Belong to The Sky”
Peter talked about the new song, saying: “It’s another song which has taken a while to grow. It was a candidate, in some form, for the ‘i/o’ record, but didn’t get finished off, but it was always one of my favourites.”
“The starting point of the song was the timpani tom-tom pattern which was inspired by an old film called Jazz on a Summer’s Day and also a wonderful drummer called Chico Hamilton. I think he was the pioneer of the use of timpani sticks on the toms and I always loved that sound; calm and hypnotic. It set a really strong mood for me and the song grew up around it.”
“I’m a strong believer that reality is more malleable than we imagine and that if you really make strong pictures of something happening, you really affect the chances of it materializing. Visualising… how dreams leave their nest, is the main topic of the song.”
“One of the things that the technological revolution is doing is accelerating the time for thoughts to become material things. The time it takes to transform an idea into something material is being radically cut. In the song, the verses have a more dreamlike ‘on your back and look up at the sky‘ feeling and then in the chorus it’s about the execution, the materialising.”
“For many years now I let the ends run on every song because what often happens, which I found so frustrating, is you get to the end of a song and the band have just really locked in the groove, relaxed and it then all of a sudden, it stops… and the best feeling for a musician is when you’re in the pocket, in the groove, and it’s all happening around you. Consequently, I now let these endings loose and wonderful things happen.”
“One of the things I love about this track is that these amazing musicians let themselves loose and really take off – with Manu (Katché) driving. It’s just great,” Peter Gabriel said.