‘Eye in the Sky’: the epic Alan Parsons Project song about the reality of 1984
References are all around us. Art is so vast now in general, as the majority of human history can be found within the walls of a gallery or in the pages of a book, that the idea of a completely original piece that hasn’t in some way been influenced by that which came before it is, in itself, a work of fiction. That’s not to say drawing from influence is a bad thing, though. It leads to exceptional work such as the Alan Parsons Project ‘Eye in the Sky’.
‘Eye in the Sky’ was released in 1982 as the single to the band’s sixth album of the same name. It was incredibly well received, climbing the charts in New Zealand, Canada and Spain. Thanks to the poetic nature of the lyrics and the themes of eyes everywhere, it wasn’t long before people started connecting the song and George Orwell’s novel 1984.
Alan Parsons confessed that Orwell’s novel was on his mind when he was assembling the project, stating: “We wanted to base the album on the sort of concept of big brother is watching you – there’s always a camera watching you, there’s always a helicopter in the sky overseeing you, and you can read a line of small newspaper print from space.”
That being said, while it might have been a theme for the album, specific references in the song are hard to come by. Standard terms used in reference to the novel, such as Room 101, Big Brother and Ingsoc, don’t appear in the lyrics themselves. It could well be that the book came as an afterthought instead of being the driving force behind the track.
There is a reference to security cameras that plays a significant role in the song. Once people begin thinking about surveillance and being unable to go anywhere without being seen, the link to 1984 is not hard to make. Chances are, once the piece was written and decided as the title track, the rest of the project formed itself around the single with Orwellian influence.
While artistic influences and references are so prominent in music, the method displayed by the Alan Parsons Project in implementing it is good practice. Seeing where the theme can work after the creation means the piece still has a layer of individuality behind it rather than just being a carbon copy of the thing it references.
‘Eye in the Sky’ remains a much-loved fan favourite of the band, and given surveillance only seems stronger in 2024, it takes on an all-new relevance. Take that eye in the sky and place it in your hands and pockets. There will be music out there that grasps what The Alan Parsons Project did with this song and injects it with modernity, as they did with George Orwell’s novel, as is the way of influence.
