Dolby promoted himself as a kind of mad scientist, an egghead that had successfully harnessed the power of synthesizers and samplers, using them to make catchy pop and electro-funk. Before he launched his solo career, Dolby had already worked as a studio musician, technician, and songwriter. After starting out as a teenaged live sound man, mixing The Fall, The Members and others using a PA he built himself, he formed the arty post-punk band Camera Club (also known as Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club) with Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn and Matthew Seligman. Within a year, he had left the group and joined Lene Lovich’s backing band and gave her his song "New Toy", which became a British hit in 1981. That same year, he released his first solo single, "Urges", on the English independent label Armageddon. By the autumn, he had signed with Parlophone and released "Europa and the Pirate Twins", which nearly cracked the UK Top 40.
Dolby started playing synthesizer on sessions for other artists in 1982. That year, he played keyboards on Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Joan Armatrading’s Walk Under Ladders. His most distinctive session credit is that keyboard line after the chorus on Foreigner’s "Waiting for a Girl Like You". In that eventful summer, Dolby also collaborating with New York rappers Whodini to create "Magic’s Wand" – a pivotal early hip hop track (the first rap single to shift 1 million copies), and it also single-handedly started the new jack swing movement.
Even with all of these achievements, 1982 was most noteworthy for the release of Dolby’s first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless, in the summer of 1982, the landmark album reaching number 13. "Windpower", the first single from the record, became his first Top 40 UK hit in the late summer. Other cuts from the album include "The Airwaves", and "One of Our Submarines", a meditation on the futility of empire.
In January of 1983, Dolby released an EP, Blinded by Science, which includes what would become his most well-known track, "She Blinded Me with Science" featuring a cameo vocal appearance by the notorious British eccentric Magnus Pike, who also appeared in the song’s video. "She Blinded Me with Science" was a minor hit in England, but the EP and the single became a major American hit in 1983, thanks to MTV’s heavy airplay of the video. Eventually, the song reached number five on the US charts and it was included on a resequenced and reissued version of The Golden Age of Wireless, which peaked at number 13 in America.
The Flat Earth, Dolby's second album, appeared in early 1984, and harkens back to a time when songs mattered more than the video, even as MTV was discovering its strength. Opening with "Dissidents", conjuring up images of blacklisted authors and ugly snow, gray from oppression, with Matthew Seligman’s bass at the fore, lavish, growling, popping through octaves, funk-a-fied and twinkling with harmonics throughout the album. The title track is an R&B daydream of piano and Motown stabs of rhythm guitar. "Screen Kiss" has a similarly ethereal quality, and the lyrics are lush with imagery. The cover of Dan Hicks’ 1967 "I Scare Myself" is a balmy jazz club cocktail – faithfully nostalgic, right down to a bittersweet trombone solo from Peter Thomas. "Hyperactive" is one part bizarre to two parts infectious; guest vocalist Adele Bertei fuels the fire to what was already destined to be a memorable diversion beyond the reach of Top 40. The single became Thomas’ biggest UK hit, peaking at number 17.
During 1985, Dolby collaborated with artists including Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield and Herbie Hancock; and notched up some more high-concept production credits. George Clinton's Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen, and Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog were all midwifed by Dolby, who also was musical director for David Bowie at Live Aid. Also in 1985, he began composing film scores, starting with Fever Pitch. In 1986, he composed the scores for Gothic and Howard the Duck, for which he credited himself as Dolby's Cube. (That credit led to a lawsuit from the Dolby Labs, who eventually prohibited the musician from using the name "Dolby" in conjunction with any other name than "Thomas.")
Aliens Ate My Buick, Dolby's long-delayed third album, appeared in 1988 to a mixed reaction, although "Airhead" became a minor British hit. That same year, Dolby married actress Kathleen Beller. For the rest of the late 80s and early 90s, Dolby continued to score films, producing and building his own computer equipment.
1992’s Astronauts and Heretics, features guest stars such as Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ofra Haza. The album opens with "I Love You Goodbye", one of Thomas’ most evocative songs, and ends with "Beauty of a Dream" which is also a contender for that honour. Highlights found inbetween include "Cruel" (a duet with Fairground Attraction’s Eddie Reader), "I Live in a Suitcase" and "Close But No Cigar".
The following year, Dolby founded the computer software company Headspace in Silicon Valley, releasing The Virtual String Quartet as its first program, and also pioneered technology for music on mobile phones. For the rest of the 90s, Headspace occupied most of Dolby's time and energy. In 1994, he released The Gate to the Mind’s Eye, a soundtrack to the animated short film Mind’s Eye. Also that year, Capitol released the greatest-hits collection, Retrospectacle.
Thirteen years after Astronauts and Heretics, Dolby returned to live performance in 2006 with his solo Sole Inhabitant tour, which covered North America and the UK, with Thomas recreating the highlights of his earlier work from scratch, with a camera mounted like a miner’s lamp on his head, and a big screen showing the view from the artist, turning what would be a fairly dull one-man-and-a-rack-of-synths into a fascinating audio visual experience and an unintended masterclass for music technology students.
UK indie label Invisible Hands Music released a CD and DVD box set recorded on the Sole Inhabitant tour. These fresh and modern reinterpretations of Thomas’ work to date precedes a new studio album due in 2008, which is as-yet untitled, but does include a song about Britney’s ex Kevin Federline (“K-Fed”) who used an uncleared sample from "She Blinded Me with Science" and did not respond to legal approaches until a ‘cease-and-desist’ was posted in the comments field of his MySpace page. That song is called "My Karma Hit Your Dogma", and bodes well for a mighty return to form, combining Thomas’ humour and intelligence with a unique musical vision.
2011 saw Dolby get busy by returning with a new studio album A Map of the Floating City on 29 October. The album is broken down into three genres of Urbanoia's tales of city experiences; Amerikana as Dolby's take on his years living in America and it's roots music; and Oceanea: songs of life by the sea in his home country of England. The music was debuted first as download EPs to Dolby's online community and then previewed by a transmedia interactive game also called the FloatingCity.com.
Thomas Dolby is taking the music back on tour as a solo artist and with varying line-ups of bands, doing two tours of the UK in 2011, and has his first trip to Australia in February 2012 followed by dates in Japan. In March Dolby kicks off the Time-Capsule.tv tour at the SxSW Festival in Austin playing dates in USA and Canada through April. He will have a trailer parked at venues on his tour where you can produce a 30 second video offering words of wisdom to whoever will be walking the earth in the future. Dolby wants to give people a chance to “explain to an alien visitor what went wrong with our civilization. Our species may not be around on this planet much longer, so you might as well leave a welcome message for the next guys.”
N.E.O.
Thomas Dolby Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Near Earth Object.
A solid body whose orbit lies within the orbit of Mars.
Moons Asteroids. Meteorites.
You can see a meteorite almost any night.
Go out to the desert
They are pieces of stars,
You might find a piece.
Same as you and me
They have travelled through space for thousands of years.
Perhaps you will get lucky
but you will never find a piece of Soyuz
or Sputnik or Apollo 9
They are still out there
They are very faint
And the pollution in earths atmosphere
washes out their pale light
Floating without air, without light
Or else - charred on the re-entry
They are still out there floating
Within the orbit of Mars.
Look at it this way:
a river of space, a ribbon of time
like a burial by a beaurocrat
undercover of a cold war risk.
a cloud of dust-a cloud of rubble
spinning in space on the heels of the Hubble
a parallel, or a temporal rip
in the belly of the Cosmos
a fossilized finger
Somewhere in a hanger
Stored by the government, hidden from the press
some young top gun s first solo
turned out to be a N.E.O.
Thomas Dolby's song "N.E.O." stands for "Near Earth Object," which refers to any solid object whose orbit falls within the orbit of Mars. The song's lyrics explore the idea of space debris, encompassing moons, asteroids, meteorites, and human-made objects like Soyuz or Sputnik. The lyrics reflect on the fact that you can see meteorites almost any night by looking up at the sky, but finding one that is part of those specific man-made objects would be nearly impossible. Some space debris simply floats out there, without air or light, while others char on re-entry.
The song describes space debris as a "river of space" that exists in a "ribbon of time," spinning in space on the heels of the Hubble. The imagery of the cosmos as a burial by a bureaucrat reflected the era in which the song was written, during the Cold War, where the US and the USSR were in a constant arms race, and space exploration was a matter of national pride, rather than discovery. The last lines refer to a "young top gun's first solo" being a NEO, which suggests that some of the space debris that is out there represents embarrassing moments, blunders, or even accidents concealed by the government.
Line by Line Meaning
Near Earth Object.
This term refers to solid bodies that orbit within the orbit of Mars.
Moons Asteroids. Meteorites.
These are other types of celestial bodies found in outer space.
And human debris.
This refers to man-made objects that are floating in space.
You can see a meteorite almost any night.
It is possible to see a falling meteorite almost any night in the sky.
Go out to the desert
The desert is a good place to go stargazing and try to spot a meteorite.
They are pieces of stars,
Meteorites are fragments of stars that have broken off and travel through space.
You might find a piece.
It is possible, although not very likely, to find a piece of fallen meteorite.
Same as you and me
Meteorites and humans are both objects and beings that exist in space.
They have travelled through space for thousands of years.
Meteorites have been making their journey through space for thousands of years before they fall to Earth.
Perhaps you will get lucky
It is a matter of luck to find a fallen meteorite on Earth.
but you will never find a piece of Soyuz
It is not possible to find fallen pieces of Soyuz, Sputnik, or Apollo 9 since they did not fall to Earth.
or Sputnik or Apollo 9
These are man-made objects that were launched into outer space.
They are still out there
The man-made objects launched into outer space continue to exist and orbit around the Earth.
They are very faint
These man-made objects are difficult to see and are not visible to the naked eye.
And the pollution in earths atmosphere
The pollution in the atmosphere makes it more difficult to spot and observe these objects in space.
washes out their pale light
The light from these objects is very faint, making it difficult to see and observe.
Floating without air, without light
These objects are floating in space without air or light.
Or else - charred on the re-entry
If these objects are not able to make their way back to Earth carefully, they can burn up upon re-entry.
They are still out there floating
These objects continue to float around in space.
Within the orbit of Mars.
These objects are found within the orbit of Mars.
Look at it this way:
The artist is suggesting a new perspective on outer space.
a river of space, a ribbon of time
This is a metaphor describing how outer space is like a river of space and a ribbon of time.
like a burial by a beaurocrat
This is a metaphor likening space to a burial, specifically one that is bureaucratic and not emotional.
undercover of a cold war risk.
This line may refer to how the Cold War led to space exploration and competition to see which country could launch more objects into space.
a cloud of dust-a cloud of rubble
This line is a metaphor describing space debris as a cloud of dust and rubble.
spinning in space on the heels of the Hubble
Space debris is constantly in motion, moving along with the Hubble telescope.
a parallel, or a temporal rip
This line is suggestive of how space is often seen as a separate reality from our own, parallel or differently oriented.
in the belly of the Cosmos
This line suggests that space is a part of the grander context of the entire universe.
a fossilized finger
This is a metaphor referring to how space debris items are like relics of the past.
Somewhere in a hanger
These fossilized space debris pieces are kept somewhere in a storage hangar.
Stored by the government, hidden from the press
It is suggested that the government is hiding these space debris items from the public.
some young top gun s first solo
This line may be a reference to how young pilots used to take part in space missions and launch objects into space.
turned out to be a N.E.O.
This line refers to how the young pilots would launch space debris and make an N.E.O. out of it.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: DR. TERENZI, T. DOLBY
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind