| Joanna Newsom – '81 Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Just to clarify: Joanna was born in '82, not '81. The civil war was 1861-1865. However, the American revolution effectively ended in 1781, with the surrender of yorktown. So among the many other things this song is about, it is very possible that we're talking about America ("seceded from the union" here being intentionally misleading, more accurately seceded from the commonwealth). Which makes "Sr. George and the dragon" almost hilarious, being both St. George and George III of England. And as the song is about rebirth, even though we "broke our hearts in the war", she's welcoming "both, in equal part," loyalist and rebel. Which all flows nicely into the strange, ambivalent patriotism of "Good Intentions Paving Company" America has long been a metaphor for rebirth, new jerusalem, from Blake through the romantics. And the wordplay here plays with the religiousness of it, A.D. 1, novus ordo seclorum. |
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