It also contains some bells chiming at the start of the song (sampled from a BBC Sound Archive disc) not generally known by the club-going public as many people know the Monster Mix or the Monster Mix Radio Edit.
Maxi Jazz changed the opening line from "I only smoke weed when I need to" to "Deep in the bosom of the gentle night" due to pressure from MTV. The album version is nearly nine minutes long and contains some lyrics not able to be broadcast on the radio edit due to their explicit content. Sister Bliss wrote the riff after Rollo asked her to "do big strings", borrowing the idea of shifting from a major chord to a minor chord from Donna Summer's " I Feel Love". She has stated that the song's reggae-inflected bassline was influenced by Lionrock, whilst placing the main keyboard riff towards the end of the song "was an idea we got from Underworld’s way of building tension: just waiting, waiting, waiting then – bang!". Īccording to Sister Bliss, the track's music was written in bandmate Rollo's recording studio, located in a garden shed: she came up with the song's title as she was unable to sleep, describing the experience of working in the studio during the day and DJing at night as being "like having permanent jetlag". Lines about the light going out and picking up a pen in darkness were based on the prepayment electricity meter in his home, which would cut out when credit ran out, forcing him to write by candlelight. Although he was not an insomniac, Maxi drew on personal experience for the lyrics: he had recently suffered a painful dental abscess which had kept him awake at night. According to Maxi, he spent 20 minutes writing the lyrics after being given the song's title by Rollo Armstrong, before finishing them in the studio the following evening and laying the vocal down in about 25 minutes. The insomniac is also rather destitute ("Make my way to the refrigerator/One dry potato inside, no lie, not even bread, jam, when the light above my head went bam."). If I had a quid for every time someone’s come up going, 'I can’t get no sleep', I’d be living on the space station". The subject is resonant with fans of dance music, as stimulant use is common in club/rave culture, and insomnia is a common side effect - in a 2020 interview, Maxi Jazz acknowledged how it struck a chord with clubbers: "Suddenly the song was being played to crowds who had arguably taken 50 quid’s worth of high-powered drugs and weren’t thinking of getting much sleep for days. The song features Maxi Jazz rapping from the point of view of an insomniac while he struggles to sleep ("I toss and I turn without cease, like a curse, open my eyes and rise like yeast/At least a couple of weeks since I last slept, kept takin' sleepers, but now I keep myself pepped"). It was certified triple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in 2023. "Insomnia" was voted by Mixmag readers as the fifth greatest dance record of all time in 2013. It also featured on Faithless's 1996 debut album, Reverence. When re-released in October 1996, the song achieved a new peak of number three in the United Kingdom and topped the charts of Finland, Norway, and Switzerland, as well as the American and Canadian dance charts. It was originally released in 1995 and reached number 27 on the UK Singles Chart, topping the UK Dance Chart in the process. Released as the band's second single, it became one of their most successful. " Insomnia" is a song by British musical group Faithless.
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