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Child of Vision Lyrics
Well, who do you think you're foolin'?
You say you're havin' fun,
But you're busy going nowhere,
Just lying in the sun.
You tried to be a hero,
commit the perfect crime
but the dollar got you dancing
and you're running out of time.
You're messin' up the water
You're rolling in the wine
You're poisoning your body
You're poisoning your mind
You gave me coca-cola
You said it tasted good
You watch the television
It tell you that you should.
How can you live in this way?
(Why do you think it's so strange?)
You must have something to say.
(Tell me why should I change?)
We have no reason to fight,
'cause we both know that we're right.
Child of Vision, won't you listen?
Find yourself a new ambition.
I've heard it all before
You're saying nothing new
I thought I saw a rainbow
But I guess it wasn't true
You cannot make me listen
I cannot make you hear
You find your way to heaven,
I'll meet you when you're there.
How can you live in this way?
(Why do you think it's so strange?)
You must have something to say.
(Tell me why should I change?)
We have no reason to fight,
'Cause we both know that we're right.
Child of vision, won't you listen?
Find yourself a new ambition.
You say you're havin' fun,
But you're busy going nowhere,
Just lying in the sun.
You tried to be a hero,
commit the perfect crime
but the dollar got you dancing
and you're running out of time.
You're messin' up the water
You're rolling in the wine
You're poisoning your body
You're poisoning your mind
You gave me coca-cola
You said it tasted good
You watch the television
It tell you that you should.
(Why do you think it's so strange?)
You must have something to say.
(Tell me why should I change?)
We have no reason to fight,
'cause we both know that we're right.
Child of Vision, won't you listen?
Find yourself a new ambition.
You're saying nothing new
I thought I saw a rainbow
But I guess it wasn't true
You cannot make me listen
I cannot make you hear
You find your way to heaven,
I'll meet you when you're there.
(Why do you think it's so strange?)
You must have something to say.
(Tell me why should I change?)
We have no reason to fight,
'Cause we both know that we're right.
Child of vision, won't you listen?
Find yourself a new ambition.
Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.
It's partly about talking about America and partly about his strained relationship with Rick Davies. On wikipedia there's a quote "As I remember, that song was written with two things in mind. I think it was a little bit, maybe my equivalent of "Gone Hollywood". Maybe looking at America and seeing how Americans are living and possibly, also a song to Rick a little bit too, because we did live totally different lives. And life styles, possibly. So maybe it was a little bit of, a little bit of a song to him. In retrospect it was a little judgmental of me, but I think it was probably…we weren't getting on with this album. It was becoming more and more difficult to work together and we were really wanting different things out of life. And I think this was my song to him, as "Casual Conversations" was, I really believe that was a song that he wrote to me. We weren't communicating very well through this album and it tells a lot, that song".
--Roger Hodgson, In the Studio with Redbeard for The Making of Breakfast in America(first aired in June 1990).
@IntravenusDeMilo Seems like a fair interpretation. I’m not a Supertramp expert but they and Brian Wilson wrote the soundtrack to my formative years. I myself worked in rock bands playing keyboards (B3) from ages 18-24 and got to know a lot about band culture.
@IntravenusDeMilo Seems like a fair interpretation. I’m not a Supertramp expert but they and Brian Wilson wrote the soundtrack to my formative years. I myself worked in rock bands playing keyboards (B3) from ages 18-24 and got to know a lot about band culture.
Really it’s like a family, where you’re in each other’s face 24/7 (esp. when touring) and after a while the little peculiarities of a bandmate will begin to grate on others and if not held back can get nasty!
Really it’s like a family, where you’re in each other’s face 24/7 (esp. when touring) and after a while the little peculiarities of a bandmate will begin to grate on others and if not held back can get nasty!
Example: when driving everybody around (I had the only car) I had the habit...
Example: when driving everybody around (I had the only car) I had the habit of opening my window even when it was cold, at stoplights or stop signs. One day after I’d done the 25th time our normally easy-going bass player screamed at the top of his lungs, “Why do you keep doing that?” I tried to explain calmly that one of my uncles was a railway guy and recommended it as a safety measure. Well, when it's 25 below in January in Ottawa Ontario, people don’t have time for logic.
Now, consider that most musicians are loners and yet they have to work closely together to get that tight sound people want from a group, especially a pop group — which I consider a Supertramp to be. And that isn’t a put-down. Pop is the hardest music there is to be successful at.
It takes a lot of patience and unbelievable hours of work to get a song right. And if you’ve been getting on each others' nerves for the past couple of years, yet another layer of potential bad vibes must be factored in. You try to be cool but it gets personal.
Supertramp were the embodiment of a live that could replicate the studio production quality of their albums. Hodgson was aware that the fans who thronged to see them live wanted the exact same sound they were so addicted to from listening to their albums over and over. And thanks to superb management, organization of everything from the lighting to the all-important sound system, and exceedingly disciplined playing, Supertramp were able to give the fans what they wanted. If you’ve seen the “Paris” live performance video, you see the effect they could produce on an audience that for the most part could not understand the lyrics of their songs.
I think it's all down to Hodgson. He kept that disciplined workstyle going after he went on his own.
But still it’s the original Supertramp recordings I like best. Pop and rock need the energy of youth to drive them forward. And once they got into a groove, 1970s Supertramp could hold their own with anybody. Anybody!
But what broke Supertramp up is what broke up the Beatles. Only one creative genius is permitted in a band. And that is because the band invariably becomes his or her backup group.
Roger Hodgson deserved and needed his own band. He had the laser-like vision that ultimately made Supertramp a worldwide phenomenon. His songs are their great ones, with that unique combination of intensity and love of life. I’m from Canada, and we were among the first countries to “get” Supertramp.
Now back to this lyric: I don’t know if Rick Davies was a party animal in the old days or what. (I certainly was.) But Hodgson is such a sweet-natured guy, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a problem cutting some slack for associates with darker personalities, or human weaknesses that he was immune to. Hodgson comes across to me as the most well-adjusted pop/rock musician out there. He was Supertramp's Paul McCartney to the Beatles' John Lennon.
So yeah, I can see this song as calling out Davies and maybe even all of the self-indulgent Americans Hodgson encountered during their historic tour. As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, “Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”
So must Davies have felt when he became aware of slim, clean-living Hodgson whispering his band away from him. And I can totally understand why he would be resentful. And how in self defense Hodgson would use Davies's self-indulgent ways to rationalize why he was the band's natural leader.
Probably I’m reaching beyond my grasp here. But since rediscovering Supertramp a few months ago, and being astounded how well an old guy like Hodgson continues to perform — and in the process wears out fellow musicians young enough to be his grandsons — I just had to take a closer look at the their material.
As I said earlier, I think this is Hodgson's most deeply-felt song. Now that I see the lyric clearly I can agree with the interpretation of the band's interpersonal differences providing a springboard to a roundhouse swing by Hodgson at America's greedy, self-indulgent culture.
Ironically, America's obsessively consumerist, reinvent-yourself-and-get-rich culture is what captivates outsiders like Hodgson (and me), even when we express disgust at the sheer excess of it all, from three-ton SUVs to gigantic-sized soft drinks guzzled by 12 year olds.
I blame a lot of my adulation for American cultures on the songs Brian Wilson implanted in our adolescent minds in the early '60s, and how he so effectively captivated the whole boomer generation.
And, I think Hodgson is aware of his puritanical streak and also of not wanting to bite the hand that feeds him — his huge American fan base. So I will let him have his way with this song, pay less attention to the words, and focus on the unstoppable driving groove they touch on at during the song's beginning and relentlessly hammer home toward the end. I only wish I could have seen them play it live.
Breakfast in America was an seminal album, which wrapped up the 1970s for me. Amazingly good songs with both tunes and lyrics. Last year, I purchased a pair of Magneplanar speakers for my 58th birthday. My old BIA CD sounded flat and listless on the new speakers. After a little research and reading a few blogs, I purchased an imported CD of Breakfast in America remastered in Germany. My goodness what a difference like night and day - same album, same songs, but a digital remaster at Sony Studios in Hamburg, Germany. After 38 years this album still sounds great - I just listened to it this past weekend.
Child of Vision, The Logical Song, Breaklfast in America, Gone Hollywood and Just Another Nervous Wreck all have a common them running through them. It speaks about the disillusionment in our materialistic society and our culture of consumption. In many ways, the album follows in the footsteps of another group, my all-time favorite and another seminal album of the early 1970s, Pink Floyd and Dark Side of the Moon.
Dark Side of the Moon and Breakfast in America, bookend the 1970s as two great and spectacular albums, by groups that both hit their pinnacles of achievement in the 1970s. I grew up as kid and teenager in the 1970s and these two albums capture my life and how my generation was lost during that era and only the music kept us going. As I approach my retirement, I will continue to listen to these albums of my life, over and over again, much to the chagrin of my wife. May the force be with you and live long and prosper.
@althotos Well, it’s pretty hard to argue with a fellow boomer who bookends his musical formative years with Supertramp and Pink Floyd. About the latter's Dark Side of the Moon, in Vancouver they’d have midnight screenings at the Planetarium and we'd all drop acid and sit back in those groovy reclining chairs and watch the constellations go by as the theater's powerful sound system injected Pink Floyd's hypnotic soundtrack directly into our communal cerebral cortex.
@althotos Well, it’s pretty hard to argue with a fellow boomer who bookends his musical formative years with Supertramp and Pink Floyd. About the latter's Dark Side of the Moon, in Vancouver they’d have midnight screenings at the Planetarium and we'd all drop acid and sit back in those groovy reclining chairs and watch the constellations go by as the theater's powerful sound system injected Pink Floyd's hypnotic soundtrack directly into our communal cerebral cortex.
Yes, it was a time of uncertainty and strife, but that’s all part of being young. To have had the wherewithal to accept...
Yes, it was a time of uncertainty and strife, but that’s all part of being young. To have had the wherewithal to accept entirely new visions of what music could be, we teenaged boomers might have been a little too much in love with ourselves, but we knew a good thing when we heard it. And we still do. Our musical idols have more than stood the test of time.
It's about the next generation ( actually generation X but I think this could fit with any generations to come ) being " lazy " and robotic. They have everything at their disposal but lack imagination and creativity and put no effort on the things they should.
Child of "Vision", basically means the television generation. It's how people don't live their lives as much anymore, and spend time in front of the gogglebox.
I heard it yesterday on the radio...it's all coming back to me...now... great song
Someone else on another site said it was about the two main songwriters not getting on. Casual Conversations was written by Rick Davies about this and this was Roger Hodgson's reply. Not sure if it's true but it sounds plausible. If so it's more literal than most Supertramp songs - Roger sings 'how can you live in this way' and Rick replies 'why do you think it's so strange?' and they both sing ' There must be more to this life, It's time we did something right'.
Are we forgetting the title of the album upon which song appears? In case we have...it's Breakfast in AMERICA. This song is talking to America. How obvious does it have to be?
I think it could be said that this song could be an example of how far-fetched we view the American Dream. Sure we all have different ones, but we never have difficulty blowing them out of proportion. In all fairness an AMAING song, the piano, so sharp, and the drums add to the drama of it. It's been said that the theme of this album, Breakfast in America, is taking sad lyrical songs and putting them with up beat tunes. But I really think that this song has both an ominous tone and ballet. And I think that it really adds to the song. It gives it the meaning that people can become so brainwashed by everything in society, they don't know how they want to live their own life.
To me this song is about living a life of wasted complacency