| Bruce Springsteen – The Ghost Of Tom Joad Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| If anyone's a fan of RAGM and the Boss, there's a Springsteen and E Street Ban EP just gone up on iTunes with 4 songs and videos, one of which is this song with Tom Morello as guest player/singer. It's absolutely stunning. | |
| Bruce Springsteen – Paradise Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Thinking more about this (it's just that kind of song that gets under your skin) it could also be read as a song about the futility of always looking to the afterlife. The bomber and the mourner wasting their present life in two very different ways, in the hope of a paradise that never comes...hence the emphasis on waiting. The final character looks into the eyes of the person they're trying to save and realises the finality of death and the emptyness of the promise of paradise and chooses to live on,hence breaking back through the water's surface and feeling the warmth of the sun in this world. The water in the final act seems to also act as a metaphor for death,or at least the enveloping and consuming idea of paradise beyond. The powerful imagery of the suicide bomber is also very poignant and it appears that his focus solely on joining his loved one in the afterlife through violence has actually distanced him from their memory in the line "Plastics, wire, and your kiss". So much imagery and emotion in such a simple song. Pure genius. | |
| Bruce Springsteen – Paradise Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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To me, the song is about death and three different stories linked by the loss of a loved one and the afterlife. The first is the most disgust, the suicide bomber who uses his child's backpack to put his bomb in. I've always assumed that he lost his child in similar circumstances and this is his revenge, to join his child in the afterlife but the lack of any mention of his fate suggests he will be waiting forever. The second story's imagery suggests an older person, especially the image of fall/autumn as the leaves turn brown. They've lost a loved one and are simply marking time and not living life, trying to remember the smell and touch of the deceased, before they, themselves, die. The third story is the loss of a loved one to drowning. The frantic search up and down the river, jumping in to save them only to find they're already dead. The final words suggest that breaking through the waves and feeling the sun on their face, they've actually crossed into paradise themselves and that, through acting selflessly and trying to rescue another, a theme all through the album, that they are the only one that has been reunited with their loved one. The suicide bomber being denied for taking others lives and the older person marking time but failing to live life to the full as a result because they're spending so much time in mourning waiting endlessly for death. A truely brilliant and heartfelt song. |
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