"Electric Eye" is the second song on English heavy metal band Judas Priest’s 1982 album Screaming for Vengeance. It has become a staple at concerts, usually played as the first song. AllMusic critic Steve Huey called the song a classic.
Musically, the song is in the key of E minor, and its guitar solo is played by Glenn Tipton.
"Electric Eye" is an allusion to the book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, in the use of the name of the pseudo-omniscient camera that watches over the community at all times. In this dystopia, the form of government, Ingsoc (Newspeak for English Socialism), is utterly totalitarian, and if citizens are caught rebelling in any manner, they "disappear". In the song by Judas Priest, however, the cameras are updated to take the form of a powerful satellite, that is "elected," to take "pictures that can prove," and "keep the country clean". Thus, the song has been called "prescient" for its depiction of a modern surveillance state, operating within the context of an ostensibly democratic nation.
Electric Eye
Judas Priest
Written by: Robert Halford, Kenneth Downing, Glenn Tipton
Album: Screaming For Vengeance
Released: 1982
Up here in space
I'm looking down on you
My laser's trace
Everything you do
You think you've private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I'm watching all the time
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I'm elected, electric spy
I'm protected, electric eye
Always in focus
You can't feel my stare
I zoom into you
But you don't know I'm there
I take a pride in probing
All your secret moves
My tearless retina
Takes pictures that can prove
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I'm elected, electric spy
I'm protected, electric eye
Electric eye
In the sky
They feel the stare
So always there
There's nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
I'm made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I'm elected, electric spy
I'm protected, electric eye
I'm elected, electric spy
I'm elected
Protective, detective
Electric eye
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