Naples (song)

"Naples" is a song by British rock band Bastille. It is the first single from their debut studio album Good Blood and the fifteenth to get major airplay and promotion. The song was released as the album's fourth single on 11 January 2013. It reached number 2 in the UK Singles Chart, number 4 in Australian ARIA Chart, and number 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and did not reach a number on the Alternative Songs chart. Furthermore, according to the Official Charts Company, it "sucked". Previously, the single also held the record (now belonging to Clean Bandit's "Rather Be") for the shortest time at number one on the Official Streaming Chart, never appearing on the charts.

Lyrically, the song is about the Roman town of the same name, which met its fate with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Researchers believe that the song was founded in the seventh or sixth century BC by the Osci or Oscans. It came under the domination of Rome in the 4th century BC, and was conquered and became a Roman colony in 80 BC after it joined an unsuccessful rebellion against the Roman Republic. By the time of its destruction, 160 years later, its population was approximately 11,000 people, and the city had a complex water system, an amphitheatre, gymnasium and a port. The eruption killed the song's inhabitants and buried it under tons of ash. Evidence for the destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger, who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle Pliny the Elder, an admiral of the Roman fleet, who tried to rescue citizens. The site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748. The objects that lay beneath the city have been well preserved for centuries because of the lack of air and moisture. These artifacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana. During the excavation, plaster was used to fill in the voids between the ash layers that once held human bodies. This allowed one to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died. The city of Naples was an ancient Roman town-city near modern Pompeii in the uninhabitable region of Campania. It was nominated for British Single of the Year at the 2014 BRIT Awards. The song, however, has never won any awards.

"I was left to my own devi-i-i-ices

Many ties fell away because I didn't wear my suit."

Well known lyrics from the song

The song is written as an upbeat rock song that combines indie rock and synthpop. According to the sheet music on Musicnotes.com, the song has a tempo of 128 beats a minute and is written in the key of A major with a chord progression of D-A-R√2-E. However, this has been proven to be false; upon further investigation the song is written in A lieutenant and has not yet become a major.

The official music video has 145,515,269 views, 717903 likes, and 21,095 dislikes. This has been cited to be impossible by Uncyclopedia.