Written by Solange Knowles.
Arranged by Dan Gee.
Originally performed by Solange.
Astrid on mechanical birds
Anwen texts me about the absent centre of the song, ‘Cranes in the Sky’. She says: “‘It’ does great work.” Solange released the song at the same time as Christina Sharpe published her book In the Wake, in which anti-Black racism is theorised as a total environment. I used to teach the song and the book together to give one example of what Sharpe means, and how it is animated by the pop song, my favourite form to study.
“Sometimes I don’t want to feel those metal clouds” is a way of saying, I refuse the terms of order and I refuse order’s appearance as natural, as when, in the sky, a mechanical bird looks as if standing on one foot in the silver water of a city. But it’s not only a song of refusal. The looped and layered refrain, away, is also a song of desire – a song about escaping what encloses and harmonising in the process.
“I used to write and record a lot in Miami during that time, when there was a real estate boom going on and developers were developing all of this new property. There was a new condo going up every ten feet. I remember looking up and seeing all of these cranes in the sky. They were so heavy and such an eyesore, and not what I identified with peace and refuge… And that line came to me because it felt so indicative of what was going on in my life as well. And, eight years later, it’s really interesting that now, here we are again, not seeing what’s happening in our country, not wanting to put into perspective all of these ugly things that are staring us in the face.”
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