Capital Cities - Safe And Sound Lyrics

Safe and Sound was released as a digital download in the United States in February 2011 and was released in Germany on April 5, 2013-around the time it finally started getting widespread airplay in the US. The song has been heard in commercials for HBO, Smart Car, Microsoft, and Mazda.

Regarding the track's meaning, Merchant noted to Billboard magazine: "The song is an anti-doomsday song in some ways - expressing the idea that every generation thinks that the end of the world is right around the corner, but it never comes to pass,"

The song is Capital Cities' take on "Breathe," the second track on Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album. "We definitely gave it a different twist," Simonian told Radio.com. "It sounds a little hip-hop-ish, a little trip hop-ish and we decided to incorporate the Tupac Shakur verse sample to twist it up, a verse that we found online somehow fit perfectly with the theme."

The song was actually created back in 2011, before Merchant and Simonian were known as Capital Cities, when the Los Angeles pair were earning their corn composing music for advertising campaigns. "It started as a little idea we came up with - it wasn't a fully fleshed-out song, per se," Merchant told Billboard magazine. "We noticed that, when we showed it to people, there was this unanimous feeling that there was something special about this music, and we started to develop it.

It took 10 different versions before we finally came to what you hear on the radio now, where we decided to add a trumpet for the main bridge part, which I think was one of our best decisions on the song. And we brought out this vintage keyboard that provides the foundation for the song. So the song really took a long time to get right, because we knew it was such an important song for us."

An older video of the song was released to YouTube on February 24, 2011, and features clips of dancing and war arranged in chronological order. The official second video of the song, directed by Grady Hall, was released onto YouTube on April 25, 2013.