Toad the Wet Sprocket Songs - Walk on the Ocean Lyrics

Toad the Wet Sprocket - Walk on the Ocean

Toad the Wet Sprocket - Walk on the Ocean Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Fear
Released: 1991

Walk on the Ocean Lyrics

We spotted the ocean at the head of the trail
Where are we going, so far away
And somebody told me that this is the place
Where everything's better, everything's safe

Walk on the Ocean
Step on the stones
Flesh becomes water
Wood becomes bone

And half an hour later we packed up our things
We said we'd send letters and all those little things
And they knew we were lying but they smiled just the same
It seemed they'd already forgotten we'd came

Now we're back at the homestead
Where the air makes you choke
And people don't know you
And trust is a joke

We don't even have pictures
Just memories to hold
That grow sweeter each season
As we slowly grow old

Writer/s: DINNING, DEAN / GUSS, RANDAL / PHILLIPS, GLEN / NICHOLS, TODD
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Walk on the Ocean

Is the ocean a metaphor for heaven? Is the song about Jesus?

To answer these questions, we asked Toad the Wet Sprocket lead singer Glen Phillips , who writes their lyrics. He told us that the band's guitarist Todd Nichols had composed the music, so Glen bashed out a lyric for the demo in about five minutes. A few weeks earlier, he had taken a vacation with his wife to Orcas Island in Washington State, so he had images of cleansing water in his cortex. "I wrote down literally the first thing that came across my mind," he said. "The lyric and the chorus, I have no idea what it means, unfortunately. Then I tried rewriting it and nothing ever really worked. I tried to make the chorus mean something, and eventually said, 'Well, it sounds like I know what I'm talking about.' So we just left it as is. It was the least-conscious, least-crafted lyric."

The verses in this song tell a semblance of a story, but Phillips describes the chorus as "nonsense" (wood becomes bone?!).

He likens this songwriting style to Nirvana's where the song might not make much sense, but it makes you feel something.

Fear was Toad the Wet Sprocket's third album, and their breakthrough. Released in August 1991, the album picked up steam when radio stations started playing its second single, "All I Want." The anti-rape but often misinterpreted "Hold Her Down" was the next single, and that one flopped. "Walk on the Ocean" was then issued as the last single from the album, and it was a hit, reaching its peak chart position in January 1993.

Apparently, some people thought this was a Billy Joel song when they heard it. When Joel appeared on a Howard Stern town hall presentation in 2014, Stern asked the singer about it and said he was convinced it was one of Billy's songs when he heard it. Joel said he had never heard the song before.