The topic of dreams has been with Gizzard for a long time, with tracks like “Sleep Drifter” and “Sleepwalker” among several others which look at our own desire for escapism.
“Dreams” from Butterfly 3000 is just that, a song with simplistic lyrics about how its narrator wants to sleep to escape the day. It ties into the album’s own narrative, which Stu described as “written from the perspective of someone watching over you who is like the Dream God — like maybe it’s Morpheus, the Greek god of sleep.”
There is some darkness to the track however, especially as it crosses into “Blue Morpho,” and that darkness can be understood by looking at the song’s history.

“Dreams” was one of the first songs the band came up with for the album, its origins coming from the creation of Chunky Shrapnel. “We wrote a couple of songs in major key vibes and we knew it wouldn’t work on ‘Chunky Shrapnel’, which we were putting together,” said Stu in an NME interview. “We had the song ‘Dreams’, a synth pop thing that was clearly wrong for it. We just accidentally made this music that felt like it warranted its own project. And ‘Shanghai’ came, then ‘Black Hot Soup’ and ‘Ya Love’, and it felt like enough to hold a record and we should explore this concept super deeply.”
Stu would also say in a Stereogum interview: “The first two songs written were ‘Dreams’ and ‘Black Hot Soup,’ and lyrically, they were written independent of each other. But then it started to feel like, ‘Oh, hang on, this is kind of like a lyrical journey. I’m starting to see how this song is chapter three and this one is chapter eight. We just need to fill in all these gaps. And I’ve got these other ideas that are half finished, or there’s this other riff over here that maybe I can use in chapter five, or chapter two.’ It all felt like a giant puzzle that needed to be arranged.”
“Dreams” would be influenced by the looming COVID-19 pandemic, but instead of the usual nihilism, it was shaped into something more gentle. Stu said “I think it was because it was just such a depressing time. It felt like an escape for us and for me. It was like, I’m just going to go live in my fantasyland and make fucking synth loops for a while! So, that’s the genesis. Those early songs like ‘Dreams,’ ‘Ya Love,’ and ‘Black Hot Soup,’ those came together first. At the time, it wasn’t an album, it was like, ‘I’m just going to make music. I don’t know what this is yet.’ But once a few started to come together, they had some mutual lyrical themes and we started to piece together this record. We wanted to lean on brighter textures because it felt right. It was also just challenging. We’ve made a lot of records that are scary. This one isn’t.”
The song’s original outro would become the basis for “Blue Morpho,” the next track on Butterfly 3000. The final version of the song was recorded by Stu (synthesizer/vocals/Mellotron/bass), Ambrose (percussion) and Cavs (drums) and would appear on Butterfly 3000, released on June 11th, 2021 and appeared in a full album video filmed at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles released on the 24th. In its final form the song would reference the Polygondwanaland song “The Castle in the Air” within its lyrics.