“Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star evokes the feeling of deep longing with its slow and repetitive melody, wrapped in sorrowful strings that pull the song’s tone back and forth between hope and despair. Tambourines gently jingle, barely audible, with clockwork precision, eventually rising past monotony and punctuating the song with a sense of hopeful yet elusive joy.

The musical arrangement as a whole is built around a ⁶/₄ time signature, which essentially creates a rhythm that is based upon the number 6. It is the tambourine counting out the beat triplets while the kick drum and snare take turns marking the beginning of each triplet, creating a subdued and hypnotic rhythm.

The song appeared as the first track on the album So Tonight That I Might See and was written by lead singer and lyricist Hope Sandoval with music composed and produced by the band’s guitarist, David Roback.

While the song never made much of an impact on the music charts it became very well known and was often used in the soundtrack of television shows and films.