Originally released on Portishead's 1994 debut album Dummy, Wandering Star looks directly and unflinchingly into the infinite blackness of unbridled despair. While the album version may be the best known version of the song, the slower, stripped down live version featuring Gibbon's heart-wrenching vocal finale and guitarist Adrian Utley's magical use of pliers might be one of the more powerful songs of sadness ever written. Gibbons draws inspiration from Jude 1:13 for the lyrics to the chorus, creating the felt presence of suffering of Biblical proportions.
Lyrics explore the peace that can be generated by contemplating death during the most extreme pain, and Gibbons notes that the time she'll suffer less is when she never has to wake. The source of pain explored in the song is not made directly obvious. Gibbons references masks monsters wear to feed upon their prey, which calls to mind being wounded at the deepest levels by someone trusted. She sings of those who saw the needle's eye and now tread like a husk from which all that was fled, which may allude to the ability of IV drug use to provide reliable, temporary relief from agony while eating one's soul and leaving behind a shell. Jude 1:13 talks about people "foaming up their own shame," a sentiment that often plagues people who seek solace in the temporary but real relief psychoactive compounds can provide.
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Regardless of the specifics that may have inspired Gibbon's personal suffering, it is the global, universal chord she and the band strike at the heart of despair that makes the song a masterpiece. Shared suffering is alleviated suffering, even if it is not eliminated. The song begins with a plea for someone to share her grief, but ends doubled up inside, taunted, and cruel, alone in the blackness and darkness forever. The haunting final vocal conveys what words cannot, sounds born only of someone who's been there. Even if Gibbons did not find someone to join in her suffering, her willingness to share her despair makes it impossible for anyone who listens with an open heart to feel alone in theirs.