LISTEN: A View of Earth from the Moon Shares ‘Emerson And Henry David Thoreau’

Check out the first new song in 8 years from Seattle’s Jonathan Fickes

September 16, 2025September 17, 2025 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2025, A View of Earth from the Moon, Henry David Thoreau, Jonathan Fickes, Oasis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Seattle

A View of Earth from the Moon. (Image: Britnee Lunniss)

Oasis may not have made it to Seattle, Washington. But Jonathan Fickes, doing business as A View of Earth from the Moon, creates a similar kind of maximum R&B from the comfort of his own studio.

And eight years after the release of his debut LP Closer to a Ghost, Fickes re-emerges with a big, warm power pop hosanna named after two important American philosophers that not enough people read in 2025.

“‘Emerson And Henry David Thoreau’ was written in my stateroom on the Norwegian Bliss,” he tells Rock & Roll Globe. “I used to play music on cruise ships and this song was written gazing out at the waves through the large window in my room on the second deck. The original voice memo recording might even be better than the final studio version.”

For Fickes, his goal was to create something different than what he transmitted back in 2017 in terms of lyrical context.

“I was determined to write a song with the most uplifting chorus imaginable,” he explains. “I’ve written plenty of sad songs. Sad was my wheelhouse. But I needed to hear the opposite. I’m a huge Oasis fan and Noel Gallagher has always been the master of epic transcendent choruses, so that was the target. I was at a low point in my life. A long relationship had ended and I was doubting a lot of the choices I had made. I wrote what I needed to hear. ‘Never change whenever the world tries to make you hate who you are.’”

And, of course, we had to ask Fickes the story behind his project’s name.

“I wanted it absurdly long,” he admits. “Mission accomplished. I have a proclivity for impractically long names and titles. A View Of Earth From The Moon is another great example of this. The verses are little vignettes of my childhood in Moses Lake. I had an idyllic upbringing and I just wanted to cram in as much happy stuff as I could.”

Listen to the song below and stay tuned for news on if A View of Earth from the Moon will be releasing more new music in the coming weeks and months.