| R.E.M. – The Wrong Child Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
This song is very special to me, the whole album is, actually. From the very first time I heard it, the immediate image that came to me was (as others have stated here) "the boy in the bubble", yeah; and I imagined the writer (Stipe?) fresh from watching that TV movie starring John Travolta of at least a decade earlier, sitting down and penning this song. (Lol). The song takes it beyond that simple context though, I feel, in that it applies to anyone and everyone who feels general alienation and isolation. It is a song for the lonely, the rejected, the hurt. The person out there that never really felt that they fit in with the rest of the world - that's my take on the "broad" scope of it, anyway. In a way it's a very sad and tragic song, but at the same time gives the listener the spiritual hope that it's not 'really' so bad maybe ("But it's Okaaaay"!) and that there is hope no matter how bad you feel it is - even if you never do manage to be freed from "that bubble. So it's overwhelming 'darkness' is balanced by an uplifting reassurance. I love R.E.M. They are amazing to me in the sense that they have the ability to take the complex and simplify it into a song like this one. "Everybody hurts" tends to do the same to me as this one does when I listen to it. Such utter and raw emotion, translated into such a simplistic little "musical" package. That is the "art" (and 'wonder'!) of R.E.M. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.