Second single from Lenny (2001): mid-tempo guitars and a plea for calm
Stillness Of Heart opens on clean-ish electric guitars and a measured drum pattern, then Lenny Kravitz leans into the chorus as if he is asking for quiet rather than applause. The lyric is blunt: too much noise, too much heat, a need to start again. Co-written with guitarist Craig Ross and produced by Kravitz, it sits toward the middle of Lenny, the October 2001 Virgin album that followed the Greatest Hits surge of “Again”.
The single reached shops on 14 January 2002. In the United States it peaked at No. 38 on Alternative Airplay and No. 18 on Adult Pop Airplay; in Italy it hit No. 16, in Canada No. 22, and in the UK No. 44. B-sides included acoustic takes of “Flowers for Zöe” and, on some formats, “God Is Love”. The packaging treated the song as a rock ballad with room to breathe, not a radio sprint.
Mark Seliger directed the official video, a companion piece to the album’s visual world of close portraits and hard light. VEVO later kept the clip in rotation for years; the track itself aged as a deep cut for listeners who preferred Lenny‘s mid-tempo lane over the punch of “Dig In”.
All that I want is stillness of heart / So I can start to find my way / Out of the dark and into your heart.
(Lenny Kravitz & Craig Ross, lyrics from Stillness Of Heart, 2001)
Sonically the record stays dry: guitars forward, drums without arena wash, voice slightly ahead of the band. Ross’s guitar lines answer the vocal without crowding it. Remixes later pushed the track onto Dance Club Songs (No. 13 for the remix package), proof that the hook could live outside the rock radio lane.
Stillness Of Heart never matched the chart height of “Again” or “Fly Away”, and it did not need to. On Lenny it is the track that slows the room: a written plea for calm inside a career that rarely stayed still for long.
