History of Sorts

“Locomotive Breath” is a song by British progressive rock band Jethro Tull from their 1971 album, Aqualung.

Written as a comment on population growth, “Locomotive Breath” was meant to replicate the chugging rhythm of a train. In addition to its release on Aqualung, “Locomotive Breath” saw two different single releases and has been a live favorite. It is one of Jethro Tull’s best-known songs.

“Yes, yes. It was about population growth but it was talking about what we might now call globalization. So it is about the population and its place in the expanding capitalist world that we live in. It might have seemed a difficult subject back then. It’s a difficult subject today, people don’t like to be reminded of the harsh reality of overpopulation.”

“Everything follows on from that, everything from the pandemic crisis we’re in, you can trace that back to the effect of a huge population that travel, the spread of the disease, everything to do with climate change… You can see how that is vastly exacerbated by population size. So pretty much everything that we might fear and be concerned with in terms of its effect on our great grandchildren.” according to Ian Anderson.

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