‘Twilight Zone’ is a 1982 hit by Dutch band Golden Earring and appears on their 1982 album Cut. It spent more than half a year (27 weeks) on the US Pop charts. It was the group's sole Top 10 Pop single on the US Billboard Hot 100 (the song reached #16 on the Cashbox chart) and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top Album Tracks chart, the band's only No. 1 hit in America.
Golden Earring's lead guitarist George Kooymans was inspired not by the famous TV series of the same name, but by the Robert Ludlum novel The Bourne Identity, which would later be turned into a popular movie. The song and especially the video tell the story of an espionage agent, on the run from enemy spies before being cornered. The cover of the album Cut (from which this was the only single) shows a scene repeated in the video, of a bullet slicing through the Jack of Diamonds playing card. The card is supposed to represent the rogue agent.
Interestingly, there was at least one episode of the original Twilight Zone TV series which was also a spy drama. Namely, episode #149 from season five, "The Jeopardy Room," is about a Soviet KGB agent who wants to defect, but he ends up pinned in a hotel room under surveillance from a hit man and his accomplice, who sadistically make him play a game for his life. And it's one of the few episodes where a gun is fired - "When the bullet hits the bone," indeed!
Lead vocals are divided between Kooymans and Barry Hay. Each sings lead for one half of the first verse (first Kooymans, then Hay), and Hay sings lead for the second verse with backing by Kooymans and provides the spoken lines in the introduction and first verse. Kooymans sings lead on the choruses, backed by Hay.
The video is yet another whose early airplay on MTV paid off. In MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, Rick Springfield talks about the MTV Effect: "The difference that I saw was, before MTV, you'd have to be on like your third successful album before people started recognizing you at the airport. But once MTV hit, you had that one hit single, and you were as recognizable as if you were around for three or four years. It was so instant. That was the power of television.
Label – Polygram
Songwriter – George Kooymans
Producer – Schell Schellekens
SONG LYRICS
[Backmasked]Sirens in my head
My whole life spins into a frenzy
Somewhere in a lonely hotel room
There's a guy starting to realize
That eternal fate has turned its back on him
It's two A.M
It's two A.M., the fear has gone
(It's two A.M., the fear has gone)
I'm sitting here waitin', the gun's still warm
(I'm sitting here waitin', the gun's still warm)
Maybe my connection is tired of takin' chances
Yeah, there's a storm on the loose, sirens in my head
Wrapped up in silence, all circuits are dead
Cannot decode, my whole life spins into a frenzy
Help, I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?
Help, I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
I'm falling down the spiral destination unknown
Double crossed messenger all alone
Can't get no connection, can't get through
Where are you?
Well the night weighs heavy on his guilty mind
This far from the borderline
When the hitman comes
He knows damn well he has been cheated
And he says, "Help, I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
Help, I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone
Help, I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?
Help, I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone, a ha
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone, a ha
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone, a ha
When the bullet hits the bone
When the bullet hits the bone, a ha
When the bullet hits the bone