Music Monday: Invisible Light by Scissor Sisters feat. Sir Ian McKellen

Music Monday is a meme that was created by Drew from The Tattooed Book Geek. Bjørn and I will pick a song alternatively on each Monday and share our thoughts about them. Bjørn’s pick this week is Invisible Light by Scissor Sisters feat. Sir Ian McKellen.

Scissor Sisters are a band plagued by bad decisions. This was a reverse bad decision. ‘Invisible Light’ was first released as a teaser for an immensely queer album Night Work. The previous one, Ta-Dah, was… not very good… and I found it difficult to be excited about Night Work until I listened to ‘Invisible Light’, then again and again, and eventually bumped the YouTube play counter by at least a hundred. The bad decision here is that ‘Invisible Light’ was the preview, but not the lead single. The second bad decision was eventually issuing it as as the third one with a disastrous radio edit that cuts Sir Ian McKellen’s monologue short, which is why I don’t bother linking to the official video.

I have many opinions about Scissor Sisters’ career, possibly because I was born on the same day as the singer Jake Shears. Keeping ‘Invisible Light’ for a third single and leading with ‘Fire With Fire’ which is the only track on Night Work that isn’t queer-themed – and also the album’s worst – killed the sales (Night Work was their first album not to reach the UK #1 and only spent 14 weeks in top 100).‘Fire With Fire’ is… a song, I suppose. Acceptable. Boring. Safe. ‘Invisible Light’ is a masterpiece. Have I mentioned it features Sir Ian McKellen saying ‘painted whores, sexual gladiators, fiercely old party children’ in his most Sir-Ian-McKellen-y voice?

At the doors of Babylon
You are my Zion
A pacing tiger
A keeper’s cage
Invisible light
Shoots from your eyes
A sign I can see
From my highlights

Another castle crumbles
Another monkey falls
Just open up your joy
And let the sailors climb the walls
I thought I saw you laughing
10 feet in the air
It doesn’t matter if they touch
You’re where they cut you
Can you give me

An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
An invisible light, I want
An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
To keep me alive, ohh

Look at all the tension
I can feel it with the fingers
In my mind

A opiate utopia
Gets hotter by the hour
I found you a flower
In a field
From my invention
Among the tired
Among the poor
Among the broken
The huddled masses
It’s your time

You answer to a new name
That changes all the time
I’ll call you anything you want
If I can say it’s mine
The story is never-ending
Our footprint’s been erased
But here you are, I kiss your feelings
See your mouth or is it really

An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
An invisible light, I want
An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
To keep me alive, ohh

Something really
Gets dimension
Can’t you feel it
Bend your sense of time?

Babylon
Where bricks of mortar
Diamonds, tower
Sailors lust and swagger
Blazing in woman’s beam
Whose lazer gaze penetrates this
Sparkling theater of excess and strobed lights
Painted whores
Sexual gladiators
Fiercely old party children
All wake from their slumber to debut the bacchanal
Come to the light
Into the light
The invisible light

An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
An invisible light, I want
An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
To keep me alive, ohh
An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
An invisible light, I want
An invisible light
An invisible light, oh ho
An invisible light
To keep me alive, ohh