Cranes in the Sky by Solange
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Marking 25 years of the award-winning series, Soul Music features songs from the last 25 years.
“I tried to drink it away... I tried to run it away...” Solange’s hit song, written in 2008 and released eight years later, muses on themes of isolation, loneliness, and depression. She penned the lyrics to Raphael Saadiq’s instrumental in a Miami hotel room, gazing out at the cranes filling the skyline during the onset of the housing crisis and financial crash.
Solange Knowles released her debut album in 2002 at the age of 16. This single appears on her third album, A Seat at the Table. She's the younger sister of Beyoncé.
Featuring: Journalist Douglas Markowitz; music writer Kiana Fitzgerald; author of Why Solange Matters and Big Joanie guitarist Stephanie Phillips; and Rebecca McNeil.
Producer: Eliza Lomas
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:12.7 | But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes, |
| 0:18.2 | The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials |
| 0:22.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommashranganathan. |
| 0:25.9 | However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about the traitors uncoaked. |
| 0:30.3 | So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.8 | If you haven't been to Miami before, you might imagine it as this kind of like tropical |
| 0:43.1 | metropolis paradise. It feels like a place where you can do anything or be anything. |
| 0:52.2 | It feels like a place where you can let your inhibitions go. |
| 0:57.6 | I imagine that Solange would look out her hotel window. |
| 1:02.6 | See the ocean, which is this incredible shade of cyan. |
| 1:08.1 | The beach, which is huge and stretches miles, it almost seems. |
| 1:14.6 | Birds flying around, pelicans, seagulls. |
| 1:18.6 | And she would see skyscrapers being built, |
| 1:23.6 | sort of blocking her view of these things. Well name is Doug Markowitz. I am a journalist. I was born and raised in South Florida, and I've worked in Miami and other |
| 1:47.8 | places for about 10 years. In 2008, Solange wrote cranes in the sky while she was in Miami. |
| 1:56.7 | There's always something being built in Miami. There's always some sort of huge tower going up, a condominium, some sort of business-related skyscraper, hotels. |
| 2:10.6 | And in 2008, you got one of these cycles that the city goes through this sort of boom and bust of real |
| 2:18.3 | estate speculation and construction, that's the result of Miami being this kind of magnet for |
| 2:26.7 | development. |
| 2:29.7 | Miami's a place that allows people to indulge in escapism. |
... |
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