Fireflies

Owl City is an electronica/pop project of Adam Young. The Minnesota native began recording his tunes in his parents' basement in between shifts working at a warehouse. Initial interest in his music was generated by visitors to his MySpace site, where his songs racked up millions of page views before he signed to Universal Republic. Young told Rolling Stone that his mundane job loading up trucks helped him develop his dreamy, atmospheric sound: "About two years ago I was working at a Coca-Cola warehouse all day," Young said. "It allowed me to sort of dream up these projects. One wound up being Owl City. I thought through how I wanted it to sound, how I wanted the records to look, everything. Sometimes working in a monotonous environment can really free up your imagination."
Recording in a windowless basement also helped said Young. He explained: "A lot of it has to do with me being by myself while creating it; no producers, no engineers. And that approach allows me to think more freely, I think." He added that he used simple decorations to inspire his creativity. "I have a lot of landscape paintings to look at; lots of ethereal, dreamy nature photography. Having that stuff around really creeps in subconsciously to impact the music."

Young has claimed that he started out making music in his parents' basement because of problems sleeping, and this song reflects on his insomnia. Young described it to Female First as, "a little song about bugs and not being able to fall asleep at night."

Adam Young told the story behind the song to AntiMusic: "It was 2AM and I was sitting on the floor in my parent's basement with a MicroKorg on my lap. I built this synthy legato, 'ping' sound routed through a lowpass filter and ran it through a bunch of guitar pedals. I come up with a little cascading part that wound up as the intro and verses of a song called 'Fireflies.'
I have insomnia and I've always had a tough time falling asleep for as long as I can remember. I wanted to sing about my inability to sleep in a whimsical way that portrayed the condition as lighthearted and almost more of a 'blessing' than a curse. It's ironic that when sleep and I cannot bring ourselves to meet is often when inspiration strikes hardest. I'd just been on vacation to Iowa the week before I wrote the song and was amazed at how many fireflies came out at dusk. I didn't really have to think about making a connection between insomnia and lighting bugs, it just sort of happened and the song basically wrote itself. It was a lot of fun."