"Belfast" is a song on English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 pop-rock performer Elton John

Elton John

Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...

's 1995 album, Made in England. He talks about the city of Belfast

Belfast

Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

 in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 and how he loves it. It features traditional Irish music in the background.

Scrapped promotional single and unreleased B-side

"Belfast" was set to be released as the fifth and last single from Made in England. As such, the single for "Belfast was to be a promotional single. "Belfast" was edited down to half its length and remixed for radio airplay by Chris Thomas

Chris Thomas (record producer)

Chris Thomas is an English record producer who has worked extensively with The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, Badfinger, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Pulp and The Pretenders. He has also produced breakthrough albums for The Sex Pistols and INXS.Thomas is quoted as saying -Early life:Thomas was...

. After completion of the rigorous task of editing and remixing the nearly seven-minute song, the release of "Belfast" (single edit) was scrapped several weeks before release because Island Records

Island Records

Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...

, Elton John's U.S. distribution company, objected to, in its words, the traditional Irish "flavor" of the song and interpreted it as having both religious and war-related undertones. The album version contains a segue

Segue

A segue is a smooth transition from one topic or section to the next.-In music:In music, segue is a direction to the performer. It means continue without a pause. It comes from the Italian "it follows". The term attacca is also used in classical music.For written music it implies a transition...

 from "Believe" to "Belfast". The unreleased single edit of "Belfast" contains an instrumental outro not found in the album version. Both the single edit of "Belfast" and its B-side "Basque", which dates back to 1990, remain officially unreleased, but the songs are circulating amongst the Elton John tape trading

Tape trading

Tape trading is an unofficial method of distribution of demo tapes encompassing musical genres such as punk, hardcore, and extreme metal. The practice which was most prevalent during the 1980s and 1990s, also saw people distribute recordings of live music shows...

community.