I Wrote That: Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody on 20 years of ‘Chasing Cars’

‘If our third record Final Straw opened the US, the UK and Europe to us, then Eyes Open made the rest of the world available,’ Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody tells M about the global impact of their 2006 LP. ‘It's an album that’s still very close to our hearts.’

One of the best-selling UK rock records of all time, it’s no surprise that the band are planning to mark its 20^th anniversary in July by releasing a special edition of Eyes Open. Guitarist Nathan Connolly is taking the lead with diving into the Snow Patrol archives to pull together exclusive material — including live recordings, forgotten demos and early versions of album tracks — for inclusion in the new commemorative release.

‘There's a very early version of Chasing Cars which was really bad,’ Gary says with a laugh. ‘We haven’t put it on [the anniversary release] — that one stays in the vault!’ The still-undisclosed version of the song has a set of lyrics that Gary doesn’t even remember writing: ‘While the lyrics in the chorus were the same, the verse is different — it clearly wasn’t my best day [writing] lyrics!’

‘It was very clear, even in the early stages, that Chasing Cars was something special.'

The jewel in Eyes Open’s crown is Chasing Cars. Snow Patrol’s most successful song — 1.7 billion Spotify streams and counting, to name just one stat — was released as a single on 6 June 2006 and peaked at number six in the UK charts. The initial idea for the track came about during a mammoth songwriting session with the album’s producer Jacknife Lee.

‘I was staying with Jacknife at his house in Kent, which had a little studio he called The Garage,’ Gary recalls. ‘He was at the desk recording as I just wrote a bunch of stuff — a stream of consciousness. I wrote 10 songs that day, and we were three or four bottles of wine deep by the end of it! But five of those songs ended up on the album, one of which was Chasing Cars.’

Listening back the next day with fuzzy heads, the pair were delighted with the results: ‘It was very clear, even in that very early, nascent stage, that Chasing Cars was something — even above the other four songs that ended up on the album. It just felt like it was something special.’

Linking up with his bandmates Tom Simpson, Paul Wilson, Jonny Quinn and guitarist Nathan to finish the song, Gary recalls the final arrangement of Chasing Cars being ‘the tricky part’ to nail down. With the assistance of Jacknife (who Gary refers to as ‘the genius’ in the room), though, the band were able to land on the perfect formula.

‘The song sounds like it's always been that way — maybe because it’s been around for 20 years,’ Gary acknowledges. ‘It’s a song that has perhaps got into the musical consciousness, which is something we're very proud of. It's rare that any band has a song that goes that deep into the world.'

Upon its release in the summer of 2006, ‘it felt like it resonated on the radio, and when we played it live everybody was singing along,’ Gary recalls. ‘It felt like it didn’t matter what room we were playing in, what size, what festival — the whole place would be singing.’

The track’s success was further propelled by its inclusion in the season two finale of the US medical drama Grey's Anatomy. ‘At the end of the episode, the song title and our band name was included in the credits, which we weren’t expecting,’ Gary recalls. ‘It became the most-downloaded song in the US iTunes store, which was extraordinary.’

In June 2019, PPL named Chasing Cars as the most-played song on British radio this century (‘it’s still feels a little bit early for that accolade!’ Gary jokes now). It’s clear that Chasing Cars carries significant meaning for so many people, and Gary cherishes every interaction he has: ‘Hearing 20,000 — or even 80,000 — people sing it back to you at high volume? I don’t think there’s another feeling like that in the world.’

‘Hearing 20,000 people sing your song back to you? I don’t think there’s another feeling like that in the world.’

Snow Patrol will play several big outdoor shows this summer, including headline dates at Crystal Palace Park in London and Edinburgh Castle. The band’s contribution to the UK live music industry was marked by PRS for Music back in 2010 with a Heritage Award, which is now on display at the Duke of York pub in Belfast — the venue of their first ever gig in 1998.

‘PRS is very, very important, and I appreciate all the work that they do,’ Gary says. ‘I appreciate that [heritage] plaque, which was very nice for us! It’s positioned outside our first gig [venue] in Belfast, which was very nice. It’s nice to be acknowledged in that way.

'PRS have done lots for us over the years, and we’re delighted to give them massive props.’

The band are currently working on new music, with the follow-up to 2024’s The Forest Is the Path set to include work with acclaimed producer Fraser T Smith, who the band are set to connect with in the studio later this year. While ‘a lot of songs’ are already written for the upcoming record, Gary acknowledges that their retrospective outlook is having an influence on the new material.

‘We [used to] actively avoid writing songs in the same vein [as our previous records],’ he says. ‘I actively refused to do that for a long, long time, as I never wanted to repeat myself.’ Now, though, Gary believes that ‘the only way to write a good song is to do it naturally… and when you close a part of yourself to the possibility of something, I think that’s maybe where I made a mistake in the subsequent albums after Eyes Open. It’s something we actively opened ourselves back up to for The Forest Is the Path, just taking nothing off the table.

‘This record still feels very vital when we play it live, so it's with us all the time.'

‘We’re never going to write Chasing Cars again, because it already exists. If you step on its toes, you’ll know it,’ he adds. ‘Allowing yourself the possibility of writing something big, bold, brave and simple, it’s not something that should ever be denied. I think [post-Chasing Cars] I was just too afraid of repeating myself.’

Twenty years on, the band hugely appreciate the place that Chasing Cars, and the entirety of Eyes Open, plays in Snow Patrol’s history, both past and present.

‘For half of that album to still be in our setlist, still be going down a storm and people still singing… it's definitely stood the test of time,’ says Gary. ‘[That] record still feels very vital when we play it live, so it's with us all the time. It's not something we'll ever forget or leave behind.’