| "Turtles All the Way Down" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Sturgill Simpson | ||||
| from the album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music | ||||
| Released | April 8, 2014 [1] | |||
| Recorded | 2014 | |||
| Genre | Country, psychedelia | |||
| Length | 3:08 | |||
| Label |
| |||
| Songwriter(s) | Sturgill Simpson | |||
| Producer(s) | Dave Cobb | |||
| Sturgill Simpson singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"Turtles All the Way Down" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Sturgill Simpson. It was released in April 2014 as the second single from his album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music.
The song title, also in the lyrics, is a reference to "turtles all the way down", a lighthearted term for the concept of Anavastha from Indian philosophy, which states that there is no underlying basis, or ground, for existence. The song lyrics are about, in part, the psychedelic experience as brought on by drugs including marijuana, LSD, psilocybin and DMT. References are made to encounters with Jesus, the Devil, Buddha, and reptile aliens. The songwriter's mortality, and the life saving effect of love, are also referenced. [2] The musical form is that of a country music ballad.
In his review of the album, Thom Jurek gave the song a positive review, praising both the production as well as Simpson's vocals and saying that "The track features Cobb's nylon-string guitar, the wafting tapes of a Mellotron, electric bass, acoustic and electric guitars, and sharp drums framing Simpson's lyrics that refer to Jesus, the Old Testament, Buddha, mythology, cosmology, drugs, and physics, before concluding that "love's the only thing that ever saved my life," making it a glorious cosmic cowboy song. [3]
Rolling Stone ranked the song No. 4 in its article "25 Best Country Songs of 2014." It praised the lyrics, saying that ""Turtles All the Way Down" is many things. Part twisted travelogue ("Met the devil in Seattle and spent nine months inside the lion's den"), part half-baked philosophy seminar ("Our souls must roam to and through that myth we call space and time"), "Turtles" serves as Simpson's grand mission statement for the rich storytelling and sentimentality that define this promising new artist." [4] The same outlet also ranked the song at #142 on its 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time ranking in May 2024. [5]
The music video was directed by Graham Uhelski and premiered in April 2014. [6]
The song was featured on FX's The Bridge . [7]
The song was featured on HBO’s Watchmen in the season 1 episode “Little Fear of Lightning”. [8]
The song was used in season 2 episode 8 of the TV series Reservation Dogs .
The song was featured in the 2022 film “Dog” starring Channing Tatum.
Lucinda Gayl Williams is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums, Ramblin' on My Mind (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980), in a traditional country and blues style that received critical praise but little public or radio attention. In 1988, she released her third album, Lucinda Williams, to widespread critical acclaim. Regarded as "an Americana classic", the album also features "Passionate Kisses", a song later recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter for her 1992 album Come On Come On, which garnered Williams her first Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1994. Known for working slowly, Williams released her fourth album, Sweet Old World, four years later in 1992. Sweet Old World was met with further critical acclaim and was voted the 11th best album of 1992 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of prominent music critics. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it 6th on his own year-end list, later writing that the album as well as Lucinda Williams were "gorgeous, flawless, brilliant".
Mary Chapin Carpenter is an American country and folk music singer-songwriter. Carpenter spent several years singing in Washington, D.C.-area clubs before signing in the late 1980s with Columbia Records. Carpenter's first album, 1987's Hometown Girl, did not produce any charting singles. She broke through with 1989's State of the Heart and 1990's Shooting Straight in the Dark.
"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is a song by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult from the 1976 album Agents of Fortune. The song, written and sung by lead guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, deals with eternal love and the inevitability of death. Dharma wrote the song while picturing an early death for himself.
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is the third album by Scottish psychedelic folk group the Incredible String Band (ISB), and was released in March 1968 on Elektra Records. It saw the band continuing its development of the elements of psychedelic folk and enlarging on past themes, a process they had begun on their previous album, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion. Instrumentally, it was the ISB's most complex and experimental album to date, featuring a wide array of exotic instruments. In addition, the album captured the band utilising multi-tracks and overdubbing.
Magic Time is the thirty-first studio album by Van Morrison, released in 2005 by Geffen Records. It debuted at No. 25 on the US Billboard charts and No. 3 in the UK - Morrison's best UK chart debut until Still on Top – The Greatest Hits opened at No. 2 in 2007. Rolling Stone ranked 'Magic Time' seventeenth on The Top 50 Records of 2005.
"The Promise" is the debut single by the British synth-pop band When in Rome. It was first released in 1987 on 10 Records, as the lead single from their self-titled debut album. It was written by all three band members: Clive Farrington, Andrew Mann and Michael Floreale. The song was released in the U.S. in 1988 and reached number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It is the band's biggest commercial hit.
Satori is the second album by Japanese rock band Flower Travellin' Band, and their first of original material. It was released in Japan by Atlantic Records in 1971 and in the US and Canada by GRT Records.
The World Turtle, also called the Cosmic Turtle or the World-bearing Turtle, is a mytheme of a giant turtle supporting or containing the world. It occurs in Hindu mythology, Chinese mythology, and the mythologies of some of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The comparative mythology of the World-Tortoise discussed by Edward Burnett Tylor (1878:341) includes the counterpart World Elephant.
"Pocahontas" is a song written by Neil Young that was first released on his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. It has also been covered by Johnny Cash, Everclear, Emily Loizeau, Crash Vegas, Gillian Welch, Trampled By Turtles, and Ian McNabb.
John Sturgill Simpson is an American country music singer-songwriter and actor. As of June 2024, he has released eight albums as a solo artist. Simpson's style has been met with critical favor and frequent comparisons to outlaw country.
Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is the second studio album by American country music singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson. The album was produced and engineered by Dave Cobb and was released on May 13, 2014, through High Top Mountain, Thirty Tigers and Loose Music (Europe). The title is an homage to the album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music by Ray Charles, and also references the philosophical and cultural aesthetic of metamodernism.
Dave Cobb is a thirteen-time Grammy Award winning American record producer based in Nashville, Tennessee, best known for producing the work of Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, John Prine, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, The Highwomen, Take That, Rival Sons, and Zayn Malik, among others.
High Top Mountain is the debut studio album by American country music singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson. The album was produced by Dave Cobb and was released on June 11, 2013. Simpson self-funded the album. The record is named after a cemetery near Jackson, Kentucky where many of his family are buried.
American musician Sturgill Simpson has released seven studio albums, six singles, and ten music videos. Simpson debuted in 2013 with the album High Top Mountain on his own High Top Mountain label. This was followed in 2014 by Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, which featured the single "Turtles All the Way Down". Simpson signed to Atlantic Records for A Sailor's Guide to Earth in 2016, which included his first chart entries "Brace for Impact " and a cover of Nirvana's "In Bloom" He moved to Elektra Records for Sound & Fury in 2019, which was accompanied by an anime film of the same name. He returned to High Top Mountain for a pair of albums, Cuttin' Grass, Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions and Cuttin' Grass, Vol. 2: The Cowboy Arms Sessions; both released in 2020, these consisted of acoustic re-recordings of previous songs. The Ballad of Dood & Juanita followed in 2021.
Turtles All the Way Down may refer to:
Timothy Tyler Childers is an American country singer and songwriter. His music has been described as a mix of neotraditional country, bluegrass, and folk. His breakthrough studio album, Purgatory (2017), was considered one of the best albums of the year by several publications, and earned Childers an Americana Music Award. He subsequently received Grammy Award nominations for his albums Long Violent History (2020) and Rustin' in the Rain (2023) and the singles "All Your'n" (2019) and "In Your Love" (2023), the latter of which was his first top 10 hit on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.
Sound & Fury is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson, released through Elektra Records on September 27, 2019. Its release is accompanied by an original Netflix dystopian anime film, Sturgill Simpson PresentsSOUND & FURY, written and produced by Simpson and Japanese director Junpei Mizusaki of the animation studio Kamikaze Douga. The album marks a significant departure from Simpson's country roots, embracing hard rock, psychedelic, blues, and funk.
"Resentment" is a song by American singer Kesha featuring Brian Wilson, Sturgill Simpson, and Wrabel. It was released as the third single from her fourth studio album, High Road, on December 12, 2019, in Australia only.
Cuttin' Grass, Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions is the fifth album by American country musician Sturgill Simpson, released on October 16, 2020, through Simpson's own label, High Top Mountain. The album consists of bluegrass renditions of songs from elsewhere in his catalog.
Passage du Desir is a studio album by American singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson, released under the alter ego Johnny Blue Skies. It was released on July 12, 2024, through High Top Mountain as Simpson's eighth total studio album. It has received positive reviews from critics. Simpson has stated that this album represents a new phase in his career and was not preceded by promotional singles, but will be supported with a tour under his proper name with Johnny Blue Skies as a special guest.