Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of the New Day)

This was one of the first songs to discuss climate change. However, Ian Anderson admitted to Mojo magazine that he got his facts wrong. "Based on what I was reading in scientific journals, I thought there was a mini ice age coming," he said. Not long after came the revelation that in fact the opposite was the case. "I had a lot of egg and indeed ice on my face," Anderson grinned.

There are two lines in this song that reference the 1973 Jethro Tull album The Passion Play: "Looking for a sign that the Universal Mind has written you into the Passion Play" and "Or that everybody's on the stage, and it seems like you're the only person sitting in the audience?" The Passion Play is a two-song album similar to Thick As a Brick.