The Dead Heart

the song is regarding a more specific issue than just the development of "civillization". its echoing the plight of the Austrailian Aborigines, whose situation is mucht the same as that of the American Indian--"White man came took everything". this is a strident song calling for a reemergence of aboriginal pride and cultural heritage; a heritage repressed for many years by the Australian government and populace. the lines regarding industry are targeted specifically at those industries which have recieved favors from the government at the expense of the Aboriginal people. the Aborigines have been repeatedly shunted aside to accomodate these "collected companies" without any recompense in many instances.

this is not a song condeming the development of society. this a song decrying the abuse of men.

when i first heard this song, i thought it was about native americans. i'm a us citizen, and midnight oils' australian accents didn't really come across in the music. kind of sad that the same fate captured both aboriginies and american indians...

Forty thousand years ago was about when anthropologists believe humanity developed the concept of language and, with it, symbolic thought.

What the band is trying to say, I believe, is that Western society, somehow, has fallen off the track, that we no longer live the way nature/God/whatever meant us to live. To some degree, he's right.

The question is, is that entirely a bad thing? Sure, corporations have far too much power and influence over our daily lives.

While we don't live simple hunter/gatherer lifestyles, humanity's legacy is technological advance. Without these advances, which are the legacy of language and symbolic thought, our fate will be no different than any other species on this planet - we'll spend our time here, then disappear.

Personally, I'm not too fond of that idea.

Great song...I love how Midnight Oil make anthems like this which are damn catchy and have a great meaning. Also, check out the video clip for this song, it's very powerful..especially the shots of hundreds of tourists walking over the Aboriginal sacred site, Uluru, in fast-foward.

Its the plight of Indigenous Australians from their point of view. The song brilliantly captures not only their plight, but their use of English as a pidgin language. If you've ever heard an Aboriginie speak, especially one from the centre of Australia (more so than the cities), you'll know that they speak in an interesting way. "White man came took everything", not only a great lyric, but a very accurate representation of how an Aboriginie would communicate in the English language.

Hooray for Midnight Oil!

I think the idea if "country" is also an important concept on this song. This awesome song is, afterall, called dead country. So what is the dead country? Here's my 2 cents:

it could be the westernized parts of modern Austrailia. The pursuit of economic interests in rural austrailia transformed the physical landscape (in the form of mines, mining towns, ranches ect) and ultimately reshaped parts of the aboriginal "country". I suppose these places are physically dead (in that they no longer maintain their former ecological and social functions). But more importantly, according to the song, the physical place is only one part of country - the actual culture, customs, values and beliefs continue to live on in the hearts and minds of the aboriginals, despite the changes wrought to the kandacape by the English/Aussies.

Midnight Oil were known political activists, especially for aboriginal issues (see "Beds are Burning" and "Truganani.") This is possibly my favorite of their songs, it is so evocative and the horn section in the end always brings me to tears. They are talking about aboriginal culture (believed to be about 40,000 years old in Australia) and the destruction of that culture and their native lands by strip mining and environmental damage - anther major cause for Midnight Oil. Brilliant, brilliant, protest song, even though I usually don't like when white artists co-opt the struggles of minorities. Midnight Oil really get it (another great example: Paul Kelly, "From Little Things Big Things Grow", which is the story of the Gurindji people fighting for almost a decade to get the rights to their traditional land)

I believe that 40,000 years ago refers to when aboriginals first moved into Australia - well before whites. A song that can make you cry.

"We carry in our hearts the true country."

I love this line purely for the reason that no matter how Americanized Australian society is becoming, deep in our hearts we can only be Australian and what it stands for.

This is a song about the British taking the Aboriginals Land and how the Aboriginal people have been ignored in favor of big companies by the government since colonization. The words are saying that through all the things that were taken from them, that they still deserve more political and cultural say as they have been here for 40,000 years long and that it should be embraced.