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Paradise Lyrics

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by AIRDRIE Hill
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Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

To bobwronski....I am from Muhlenberg County, and this song is actually very specific. Paradise is the actual name of the town on the Green River where a coal-burning power plant was built. As you're driving westward on the Western Ky Pkwy, the first thing you see as you cross the Green River going into Muhlenberg County is the Paradise power plant.

@powerofcitrus just moved here 6 months ago and this song is kinda neat to me, because John Pines parents moved to where I’m from (Chicagoland) and now many of us from that area are moving south to where many of our great grandparents were from. Mine moved from Eastern Ky originally for the better opportunities in Chicagoland.

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

Signature Prine - Innocence of our childhood has left us. Although this really did happen to his parents' hometown, I can say my hometown is no longer there anymore, although it is physically.

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

Anyone have any thoughts on what "the air smelled like snakes" means? The rest of the song seems to be pretty literal. Is this line referring to something real and specific?

@bjohns7778 Snakes release a foul smelling musk as a defense. If you're in an area with a big population of snakes and startle one or get too close they will often musk, and you can smell it fairly strongly

@bjohns7778 (Please excuse the long reply. I am having fun recalling the first 23 yrs of my life in rural Mississippi.)

There is an amazing amount of rural culture encapsulated in this couplet. While I don't know about any actual 'snake smell,' any wet, muddy place would be thought to have snakes.

Here are some of my thoughts related to the phrase: Where the air smelled like snakes we would shoot with our pistols, but empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

Snakes are serpents, and serpents are 'bad' (They tempted Eve and brought sin into the world!) and...

@bjohns7778 I recently moved to Muhlenberg County and my wife grew up here. According to her, it’s about honeysuckle. An old wives tale down here is that if you smell honeysuckle there’s a copperhead nearby.

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

this song was written by John about a friend of mine who was shot and murdered. very tragic. (i also happen to live near muhlenberg county. you can see the worlds largest shovel when youre headed east on the highway.)

@Halcyon so you were friends with john prine's father? Liar

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

i love htis song - i sang it at hippie summer camp and it took me years to find out who sang it. it's so sad but beautiful at the same time

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

Industry, especially coal mining and logging, have ruined so many good and beautiful things. This song is probably about nostalgia for an old small town, which a coal company decided was a prime location for a mining operation.

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

powerofcitrus is correct, John Prine mentions this in an interview with Ted Kooser. John Prine's family was too from Paradise.

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

I love this song. I heard it as a child and it took years to find it again. I mistakenly thought that it was a John Denver song. Takes me back to when I was a kid, paradise to me.

Cover art for Paradise lyrics by John Prine

The lyrics need a small correction: It's not Adrie Hill (even though it's pronounced that way), it's Airdrie Hill. Check it out via Google Maps -- Airdrie Hill is in Paradise KY.

It's been years and years, but I grew up in Kentucky and have seen the World's Largest Shovel there in Muhlenberg County. The song is so specific -- which, to me, makes it seem more personal -- that it's a shame to get the name of the hill wrong.

(I've submitted a correction, but there's no telling whether it'll be corrected at all.)