"I smoked a joint and started playing the piano," said Church frontman Steve Kilbey about the writing of the Aussie band's biggest, dreamiest hit. "Then Karin (his girlfriend at the time) came into the room and we just made it up together. A spontaneous event."
A song about "nothing" that the band originally didn't like, "Under the Milky Way" is inspired by the Amsterdam music venue the Melkveg ("Milky Way") and came out on this day to race to no. 24 on the US Billboard charts and eventually win "Single of the Year" at the ARIA awards. (It appeared in "Donnie Darko" and a bunch of ads too). It's part of a record ("Starfish") that includes the amazing "Reptile" and is at least the band's best-known if not outright finest work.
PS: you could be forgiven for thinking the solo in the song's break is played on a bagpipe, it's actually a Fender Jazzmaster guitar played with an E-bow and then fed through a Synclavier.