It was released on September 12, 1989, by Warner Bros. Records, and features compositions and production by Angelo Badalamenti and film director David Lynch.
[5] Early recording sessions were difficult until Cruise heard her vocals treated with effects, upon which she recognized that Badalamenti was creating "mood pieces", and also took to Lynch's lyrics.
"[1] Floating into the Night has been characterized as a dream pop album,[1][7][8] with heavy elements of jazz and traditional jazz instrumentation;[9][10] Rolling Stone considered Floating into the Night as a definitive development of the dream pop sound, describing how the album "added depth to [the genre]" and "gave the genre its synthy sheen", particularly on the track "Mysteries of Love".
[1] In the 1998 book MusicHound Lounge: The Essential Album Guide, writer Jack Jackson wrote "The tunes...fill a 'trip-lounge' void between traditional and non-traditional genres.
[17] "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", "Into the Night", "I Float Alone" and "The World Spins" were performed in the 1990 Lynch production Industrial Symphony No.
[18] "Falling", "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", "Into the Night", "The Nightingale" and "The World Spins" appeared in Twin Peaks, a television series co-created by Lynch.
In The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, academic John Richardson said that Cruise's considerable use of reverb makes her sound as if she sings "from a distance that clearly parallels the distance between the other world that [Twin Peaks character] Laura Palmer has fallen into and the primary diegetic world of the other characters"; he considered the lyrics to "Falling"—an instrumental version of which was used as the theme song to the series—as "reinforc[ing] this impression since they can easily be understood as representing Laura's point of view".
[5] Cruise, however, considers Lynch's lyrics to have been written about his then-partner, Italian actress and model Isabella Rossellini.
"[22] In a short feature article in Spin, Scott Cohen likened the album to "a dark movie with no film footage, just a haunting voice, bizarre dialogue and vivid atmospherics", and described Cruise's vocals as "scary and beautiful".
[31] However, the album garnered a mixed review from The Village Voice editor Robert Christgau, who said that "when admirers claim [Cruise] sounds best in a dark room at three in the morning, I wonder whether she puts them to sleep too.
"[27] Writing a retrospective review for AllMusic, Ned Raggett referred to Floating into the Night as "more or less [the] unofficial soundtrack [to] Twin Peaks" and added that "the combination of Cruise's sweet, light tones, Lynch's surprisingly affecting lyrics … and Angelo Badalamenti's combination of retro styles and modern ambience, is a winner throughout.
"[7] Pitchfork critic Sam Sodomsky called the album "one of dream pop's chief benchmarks", while also noting that it "captured something important about dreams that plenty of other artists in the genre have ignored ... Cruise and her collaborators also had the ability to shake you awake, to twist an image that should be pretty into something broken and grotesque.
[42] All lyrics are written by David Lynch; all music is composed by Angelo BadalamentiAll personnel credits adapted from Floating into the Night's album notes.