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"Soul Meets Body" is a song recorded by the American rock band Death Cab for Cutie for their fifth studio album, Plans. It was released as the lead single from Plans on July 16, 2005, through Atlantic Records. Death Cab for Cutie emerged from the Pacific Northwest in the early aughts and built a following with its confessional lyricism and straightforward indie rock sound. "Soul Meets Body" was their first single for Atlantic, the major label with which they signed in 2004. The song is thematically existential, examining the intersection of soul and body though a relationship metaphor.
Singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard wrote the song, while guitarist Chris Walla produced the track. The song's music video depicts Gibbard wandering through a mysterious forest where musical notes lift out of plants. "Soul Meets Body" became the band's first hit single; it hit number one on Billboard's Adult Alternative Songs chart, and the top five of the Hot Modern Rock Tracks. It was their first to crossover to the all-genre Hot 100, where it peaked at number 60. The song has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of over 1,000,000 copies.
The song's music video was directed by Jon Watts. In the clip, frontman Gibbard waltzes across a magical woodland as foliage transforms into music notes. Gibbard picked Watts, a relative outsider, to helm the clip as he appreciated that his treatment was not simply a literal reading of the song's prose: "It's hard to pick videos, because when I write lyrics I try to make them as descriptive as possible, and I find it hard to find a treatment that's not just mimicking what's happening in the song…plus this one was a little weird," he said. It was filmed on August 3, 2005 at a ranch-style house located in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. Writers for Entertainment Weekly described the clip as "odd and lovely." The band later issued a second video for the song directed by Cat Solen as part of its Directions: The Plans Video Album.
"Soul Meets Body" was written by frontman Ben Gibbard, and produced by guitarist Chris Walla. The song was recorded at Long View Farm, a farmstead in North Brookfield, Massachusetts. The song opens with the sound of an uptempo acoustic guitar, leading to a chorus where Gibbard exclaims, "You're the only song I want to hear / A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere." Gibbard wrote the song for his girlfriend at the time. Throughout the song's lyrics, Gibbard touches on transcendental themes: in the song's hook, he pleads that "if the silence takes you then I hope it takes me too." Walla summarized the song's message: "It's a declaration of desire over circumstance. It means, 'Here's where I am and here's what I want to be and how do I bridge those two things.' I think it's a beautiful articulation of love, friendships and relationships and everything you do over the course of the day."
Gibbard recalled laboring over the song and follow-up single "Crooked Teeth": "We spent all this time trying to get "Soul Meets Body" and "Crooked Teeth" just right to make sure we were putting our best foot forward," he said.
Gibbard later reimagined the song, with the help of Brett Nelson from Built to Spill, in an electronic-infused iteration for The Electronic Anthology Project. In 2019, the song was covered by New Zealand act the Beths.
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