"Lay Your Hands on Me" is the first single released from the Thompson Twins album, Here's to Future Days. Written by trio members Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie, and Joe Leeway, it was released in November 1984 in the UK almost a year in advance of the album. In the US and Canada, the single was released July 26, 1985.
Thompson Twins frontman Tom Bailey got much of his musical training in church, where he sang in the choir. While this song has religious overtones, there's more to it as he explained:
“We were interested in the idea of group rituals of that sort, and particularly how it relates to artist, performer, and audience. ... [The song is] nonspecifically religious. It looks at religious ritual in that way, and then draws a kind of metaphor - I've always been very fond of the kind of layered metaphor where the song can be about one thing but also about another. That's part of a really ancient and noble tradition of religious writing of music. Typically, people talk about their love for God in a religious song, but what they're also saying is that they love someone human. It's a way of evoking that immense emotional weight into a song.”
