Train’s Pat Monahan recently revealed his late mother, Patricia Ann Monahan, unknowingly inspired him for Drops of Jupiter.
Drops of Jupiter, a lead single track from the second studio album of the same name, was released on January 29, 2001. However, the album, which had eleven songs, was dropped on March 27, 2001.
Train, the American rock band, consists of Pat (lead vocals), Hector Maldonado (bass, vocals), Butch Walker (guitar, vocals), Jerry Becker (keyboards, guitar), and Matt Musty (drums).
Pat appeared on the recent episode of the Music Saved Me podcast, where he opened up about his notable career, which consists of decades.
Reflecting on how Train’s hit song Drops of Jupiter came to be, the 56-year-old musician shared they were looking to benefit from the success of Meet Virginia from their first self-titled album, Train.
He explained, “We recorded an album called Something More and delivered it to Columbia Records. And they didn’t think we had a first single. I was emotionally not in the mood because I lost my mother just recently. And now I don’t have a single for this record company.”
Just a ten-minute sleep one night provided Pat with “the lyrics and melodies” he needed to make a song for Columbia Records.
“One night, I went to sleep and probably was asleep for 10 minutes and woke up with all the lyrics and melodies in my head, as though my mother had delivered me the message, ‘This is what it’s like when you go to the other side. You can swim through the planets and come back with drops of Jupiter in your hair, and don’t worry about me,'” the Homesick crooner recollected.
Notably, he did not seek inspiration from his late mother while writing a particular part of the song.
“So then with the [lyric] ‘looking for yourself out there,’ that was the emotional part of it for me, that was like… it somehow had to translate into a love story, and so that was, that was the little bit of something I gave to the song that maybe my mother didn’t deliver,” Pat explained.
It is pertinent to mention that Patricia Ann passed away due to lung cancer in December 1998 when he was on tour with the band.
