Sail (song)

"Sail" is a song by the American rock band Awolnation. It was released as a single on November 8, 2010, first featured on the band's debut extended play, Back from Earth (2010), and later on their debut album, Megalithic Symphony (2011). The song was written and produced in Venice, California by group member Aaron Bruno, with Kenny Carkeet as audio engineer.

"Sail" is the band's most commercially successful song to date, debuting at number 89 on the United States Billboard Hot 100 chart in September 2011 and spending 20 weeks there before dropping out. The single re-entered the Hot 100 a year later, becoming a massive sleeper hit and reaching a new peak of number 17. "Sail" is the first song to climb to its peak after a year on the Hot 100. It spent the fourth-longest amount of time on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with 79 weeks behind Glass Animals' ”Heat Waves” (91 weeks) The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" (90 weeks), and Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" (87 weeks). As of May 2024, the song has accumulated more than 810 million streams on Spotify.

Background
"Sail" is an electronic rock and alternative rock song featuring "industrial-tinged electropop". While band frontman Aaron Bruno, has never spoken directly about the meaning of "Sail", he hinted at it in a 2016 interview, contemplating that people might want a darker twist to the songs on the radio at the time, remembering "playing the song for a producer friend . . ., and he told me everything was great, but I needed a chorus." Bruno attempted to write the chorus, failing to achieve what he thought the song needed. The song's synth-bass section was created on the ATC-1 Tone Chameleon, an external rackmount synthesizer used to recreate classic synth sounds like the Minimoog.

Music video and controversy
"Sail" opens with lead singer Aaron Bruno running to a house and shutting the blinds, relieved to have escaped from the threat outside. Bruno finds a tape recorder, which he starts singing into. He enters a bathroom and looks into a mirror, still singing. A green strip of light enters the house and scans across it, revealing a spacesuit helmet and a military flight-suit. As the light climbs up the stairs towards him, Bruno hides inside a full bathtub, but the beam scans him anyway.

Bruno is pulled across the floor by an unknown force. While attempting to cling to a door-frame, he loses his grip. The scene is interspersed with shots of Bruno closing a door and playing the song's piano section. As the song's final chorus section begins, the house shakes, lights and lamps flicker, and gusts of wind blow. Bruno is pulled by a mysterious force outside the house, and is subsequently levitated into the sky as a set of floodlights flashes on him. He drops the tape recorder.

On January 28, 2015, Awolnation had a video uploaded by YouTuber Nanalew, with over 370 million views, was blocked from YouTube due to copyright issues. The video returned several days later, but Nanalew deleted the video herself a few months afterward, posting on her Facebook page that "for the last few years Red Bull Records has been claiming all the earnings for the video. They'd agreed to work with me on a mutually beneficial partnership (including possible compensation for my video), but nothing has come through." The unofficial music video is back on Nanalew's channel and the description has been revised.

Commercial performance
In July 2010, Austin, Texas, DJ Toby Ryan premiered the song on KROX-FM, with a positive response from listeners.

"Sail" debuted at number 89 on the United States Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on September 3, 2011. The single spent 20 weeks on the chart before dropping out on January 14, 2012. In mid-2013, its use in various television shows and advertisements exposed the song to a wider audience, and it re-entered the charts. Following its promotional use in a History Channel trailer promoting Vikings, weekly downloads "more than tripled". The song then peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in its fifty-sixth week on the chart, two years after its initial debut. "Sail" was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in June 2013, and as of May 2017, it has sold over 6.1 million copies in the US.

"Sail" peaked at number five on the Billboard Alternative songs chart in 2011. The song was featured in the introduction of the 2012 film Disconnect. Due to its extremely unusual longevity, it has become the only song in the history of the Hot 100 to spend a year on the chart without entering the top 20 first.

In Australia and New Zealand, the song peaked in September 2013, reaching number 27 on the Australian Music Chart and number 33 on the New Zealand Music Chart. In the United Kingdom, the song peaked at number 17 on the UK Singles Chart in January 2014.

In an interview in late 2016, Bruno said that for a while, "He felt like he didn't deserve [the fact Sail sold so many copies]." He concluded that "at a certain point, you realize 'well I did write the song', and I've become used to it to a certain degree, but more than anything I feel like sort of a messenger of some greater methods that was meant to be heard by people in general."

Online
"Sail" was used as the soundtrack for extreme athlete Jeb Corliss' proximity wingsuit flying video, "Grinding the Crack", uploaded to YouTube in August 2011, which went viral and received over 30 million views.

Movies
"Sail" was featured in the 2012 film Disconnect, the 2012 horror film Playback, the 2014 sports drama film When the Game Stands Tall, and the 2016 horror film Incarnate, and the 2019 romantic-comedy Always Be My Maybe.

TV

 * A BMW commercial that aired during the 2012 Summer Olympics incorporated "Sail".
 * The song was featured in a commercial by A1 Telekom Austria in 2015 and 2016.
 * In 2013, the song was used by the TV channel History in a trailer for the show Vikings and in the trailer for The Counselor (2013).
 * "Sail" was featured in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot", the ninth episode of the third season of The Good Wife.
 * A So You Think You Can Dance contestant danced to it in May 2012.
 * "Sail" was featured in "The Walking Dead", the twenty-second episode of season four of The Vampire Diaries.

Formats and track listings

 * Digital download (United States)
 * 1) "Sail" – 4:19
 * 2) "Sail" (Innerpartysystem Remix) – 5:26
 * 3) "Sail" (Dan the Automator Remix) – 4:34
 * 4) "Sail" (Unlimited Gravity Remix) – 5:49

Personnel
Sourced from the original album liner notes

Awolnation
 * Aaron Bruno - lead and backing vocals, synthesizers, piano, bass guitar, drums, string arrangement
 * Christopher Thorn - electric guitar

Additional musicians
 * Billy Mohler - bass guitar
 * Brad Smith - whistling