Song of the Day 5/22: Pixies, “Monkey Gone to Heaven”

Theme music for the heat dome over Mexico that’s causing monkeys to fall dead from the trees.

Black Francis wrote “Monkey Gone to Heaven” about the environment 35 years ago, before we even knew about global warming (thanks, Exxon!), so his examples of degradation are ocean dumping and the ozone layer. The latter part of the song is based, very loosely, on Biblical numerology, a subject about which he later said, “I don’t know a lot about it, or any of it really.”

“Monkey Gone to Heaven” is regarded as almost the theme song of 1989’s “Doolittle,” the band’s major label debut, in part because the album featured a cover photo of a monkey. As its lead single, it reached No. 5 on Billboard’s alternative airplay chart and made lots of music magazines’ “year’s best” lists.

Pixies broke up in 1993 but regrouped in the early ’00s. They performed the tune on Letterman in 2006.