As most of you probably know, the Sun is a giant ball of nuclear fusion around which our planet revolves, spinning along its orbital path at about 700mph.

It’s so far away that its light takes around 8 minutes to reach us — meaning our present is always illuminated by the past.

That idea applies psychologically, too.

A couple of years have passed since I wrote Rising with the Sun — the opening track on Stars.

And now, it’s finally due to be released this Friday, as the first single of the campaign.

That’s the nature of this kind of music.

There’s always a delay.

I can’t just collide the heavy elements in my spare room and fire it straight out into the universe.

It takes musicians, producers, mixers, masterers, graphic designers, distributors, radio pluggers — and, inevitably, me — coordinating everything from the centre of my own little musical solar system (with varying success).

So by the time a song comes out, while it’s new for everyone else, I tend to hear the echo of an older version of me.

But that’s universal, really.

We’re all shaped by the choices of our past. The breakfast we ate this morning. The sleep we had last night. The friends we made when we were young. Even the barman who decided to close up early the night our parents met.

And in a world that can feel so fraught with constant change, there’s something comforting about a few constants.

When I look up at a blue May sky and I shield my eyes against the sun, I’m blinded by the same ball of fire that once shone on Isaac Newton, Julius Caesar, the dinosaurs; the very first leaves of the very first trees.

Samuel Beckett, in Murphy, puts it bluntly:

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

Which - as if to illustrate its own point - riffs on something far older, from the Old Testament's Book of Ecclesiastes:

"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun."

And maybe that’s true.

Whatever feels supernoval to us now is often just a matter of perspective. Zoom out far enough, and our problems - our entire lives even - tend to seem more like minor solar flares — little sunspots that flicker for a moment, then disappear.

Now there's nothing worse than a songwriter explaining to you 'what their song means'.

That's for you to decide, or not.

But I do still hear a lot of me in Rising with the Sun.

It was born of a strange time in my life when I was trying to rediscover who I was.

And not much seems to have changed there either.

I don’t remember much about writing it — though I do remember finding the chorus one afternoon:

"In the morning, on the other side of town
It’s a struggle getting up
But I won’t let you down."

And though the sun will eventually swell to 300 times its size and engulf the solar system in a blood-red vortex of cosmic death, that won't be for another 5 billion years.

As I type these words it still hasn’t let us down yet.

Though, of course, anything might happen in 8 minutes' time.

The song goes live on streaming services at midnight on Thursday.

If the sun hasn't exploded before that, you can see what you think.

Until then...

Keep dreaming,

Rob