Taken from their fifth studio album Starfish, Australian alternative rock band The Church released “Under The Milky Way” as a single on February 15, 1988. Co-written by frontman Steve Kilbey, the title comes from Melkweg (Dutch for Milky Way) a music venue that Kilbey would frequent in Amsterdam. The song won “Single of the Year” in Australia and remains one of their most popular songs.
As for the song's meaning, "It's not about anything," Kilbey told the Guardian Australia. "Like all my songs, it's a portal into your own mind where I give you a guided meditation. It's a blank, abstract canvas for people to lose themselves in."
Guitarist Marty Willson-Piper said, "'Milky Way' is perfect really, in the way that it crosses over from our past records. It's still this very beautiful, textured song, which is what we write, but it doesn't challenge people to find out its deepest hidden meaning the way our other songs have in the past.”
Today's ear X-tacy features a classic track or deep-cut from the Alternative era every weekday at 10:10.
