The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
In the soil of are sadness
Hear our hearts bell a serenade
A faint choir tenderly shaping
A lament a hollow refuge
In the blood of the twinkling sky
Breathing in air drunk dry
There was once a time of rapture
All is lost a pale gleaming
Across this crooked land
Runs a crooked man
Our loved ones die under the hammer
Of the Soviet sun
Nothing can erase this night
But there's still light with you rhapsody
And if we can never see the sun
There's still light with you rhapsody
And I have seen all I want to
And I have felt all I want to rhapsody, rhapsody
But we can dream all we want to
We can dream all we want to, rhapsody oh, rhapsody
And I have seen all I want to
And I have felt all I want to
But we can dream all we want to
Yes we can dream all we want to
Rhapsody
In the soil of are sadness
Hear our hearts bell a serenade
A faint choir tenderly shaping
A lament a hollow refuge
Rhapsody oh, rhapsody
Rhapsody, rhapsody
There's still light with you
There's still light with you rhapsody
It's all we want to, it's all we want to
Rhapsody oh, rhapsody
Rhapsody
Hear our hearts bell a serenade
A faint choir tenderly shaping
A lament a hollow refuge
In the blood of the twinkling sky
Breathing in air drunk dry
There was once a time of rapture
All is lost a pale gleaming
Across this crooked land
Runs a crooked man
Our loved ones die under the hammer
Of the Soviet sun
Nothing can erase this night
But there's still light with you rhapsody
And if we can never see the sun
There's still light with you rhapsody
And I have seen all I want to
And I have felt all I want to rhapsody, rhapsody
But we can dream all we want to
We can dream all we want to, rhapsody oh, rhapsody
And I have seen all I want to
And I have felt all I want to
But we can dream all we want to
Yes we can dream all we want to
Rhapsody
In the soil of are sadness
Hear our hearts bell a serenade
A faint choir tenderly shaping
A lament a hollow refuge
Rhapsody oh, rhapsody
Rhapsody, rhapsody
There's still light with you
There's still light with you rhapsody
It's all we want to, it's all we want to
Rhapsody oh, rhapsody
Rhapsody
Lyrics submitted by Kaitou, edited by shari10211
Rhapsody Lyrics as written by Steven Bailey Peter Clarke
Lyrics © DOMINO PUBLISHING COMPANY, BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
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"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
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This is one of my all time FAVOURITE Siouxsie & The Banshees songs! And it IS one of the best album closers ever! I always figured it had somethign to do with Stalin or his time (Under the hammer of the Soviet sun). I always liked to think of it universally: no matter how oppressed one or a people is, no one can oppress a person's thoughts in their head. I always took the "rhapsody" as a person's free will. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this song...
SIOUXSIE: "The song is deliberately rich. It's about Shostakovitch, a really sad man, who was victimised, ridiculed and then broken by the Stalin regime. I love his music, really powerful. The song's about wishing you could be a consolation to him" Source: NME 1988
I can't believe no one has commented on this song. Like Joy Division's "Decades", which closes out Closer (1980), this song has to rank up there as being one of the great album-enders of all album-enders.
I believe this is about the russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich
Rhapsody: "an epic poem adapted for recitation" [wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn] "A rhapsody in music is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations. ..." [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(music)]
I agree ... this is one of the greatest songs. It has an range of emotion, is uplifting and moving, and stunning in its complexity.
I think Leopea's comments are right on -- it uses that image of soviet oppression to embrace and celebrate the indomitable human spirit. The way it does it -- through a musical rhapsody -- reminds us that life is also "episodic yet integrated."