Snowbound

This is (to me) great example of the visual storytelling ability of many of the earlier Genesis songs. It has a rather Grimm's feel to me, in that the storyteller is describing a traveler who chooses a poor night to sleep outside and is encased by an unexpected winter snowstorm and subsequently dies during the night from exposure. The local children arrive in the morning to play, ("here they come to play their magc games") only to discover a "snowman" on their playground. What follows is something best left to the imagination ('Here in a ball that they made/ From the snow on the ground,/ See it rolling away/ Wild eyes to the sky") or within the confines of a horror movie scriptwriter's mind. The score is gentle and soothing, but the story is anything but...

Obviously the parents of the children are lying and trying to pass something else off as snow...which is what they did in Poland during the holocust. Quite sad if that was the case. The song seems a lot deeper and can't see it dealing wiith cocaine.

On the album there are at least 2 other songs alluding to the early American West: "Deep in the Motherlode" and "Ballad of Big". With those songs in mind (my favorites) I always conjured up images of the doomed Donner party while listening to "Snowbound". Starvation and hypo-thermia can and do play tricks on the mind. The Motherlode (gold) country of Northern CA isn't far from Donner Pass. Whatever the true meaning, I still love this song after all these years.

I have loved this song for many years. I heard it the first time, when I was 17 y.o. When my mother died, I re-listened and the lyrics made some sense.

Winter has always been a mataphor of mortality. People and orders die, snowmen melt. There is a ring of beauty and acceptance to it. This whole game of existence is heading one way...

As we sleep, when we are awake, when we are young, adult, older, there is always a self-image of, what we are/ were. Everchanging thoughts and conditions play before our mind, until they fall down like snowflakes, forced to silence.

Maybe this so-called reality of fellow beings is more like snowmen, melting limb by limb, image by image, finally surrendering to the flowing in of the tide, experiencing a new kind of freedom from the changes of the world?

My friends say this song is about cocaine. I don't buy it.

It's about children and the magical feeling of a snowy winter! There are some strange lines, though... Beautiful song, anyway.

haha the drug reasoning is quite often quoted but its apparently a song about freezing to death. its almost hallucinogenically described thru the song so it could easily be about cocain... until u remember that the lyrics r by genesis. generally more into myth than missuse. still, ya never know. the freezing to death idea to me is so beautifully morbid that it adds something more to the song

This song is incredibly relaxing, damn Genesis is great.

I think this song has a similar meaning to Yes' South Side of the Sky.

Every song with "snow" in the title does not involve cocaine. It is a song I believe written by Mike Rutherford, who's lyrics at the time were "visual", like the earlier Poetry of Peter Gabriel on "A lamb lies down". One reason the group was given the term "Art Rock" along with "Yes" and "ELP". Any way the lyrics reflect visions of the snow, children, the sadness of winter, and our immortality, like the snowman. "Love of all who lie so deep" I thought might mean the love of those who have passed on is what brought us here.