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Motorcade Lyrics

These toys are all lifeless
The armor's worn off
The shadow of a shadow
Is the ghost of a bomb
Skyscraper standing
In a desert alone
A helicopter searchlight
Is searching for no-one

We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
The smokestack clouds with glory attached
We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
The smokestack clouds with glory attached

The sky creatures dance
In a parking lot wind
That blows from a tundra
Where the jungle begins
If there's hope in a roadblock
Guns in a church
The lord will take his motorcade
And drive us into the dirt

We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
The smokestack clouds with glory attached
We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
The smokestack clouds with glory attached

There's a skyscraper on the moon
And a man standing on a window
Forty-second floor
There's a light beaming through the galaxy
Telling me everything's gonna be OK

We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
We're all pushing up the tin can mountain top
Song Info
Submitted by
sinkingx3hearts On Aug 31, 2006
6 Meanings

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Cover art for Motorcade lyrics by Beck

i can TOTALLY sense Wall-E here.. picture this human-free, totally destroyed Planet Earth with several people back to see how it looks like.. they haven't got anything left to do, except of climbing the tin can mountain, circled by smokestack clouds with "the glory" that used to live on earth, attached..

My Interpretation

That's totally what I was thinking of!

The lines "Digital food malls" and "They act like earth was terrestrial prison" in 1000 Bmp also remind me of Wall-E.

Cover art for Motorcade lyrics by Beck

I agree with those that have mentioned WALL-E, this song (and the entire album actually) definitely has an apocalyptic/dystopian tone.

The "smoke stack clouds with glory attached" I have always thought either meant clouds of pollution, as if from a factory ("smoke stack")-- or, alternatively and maybe more likely, they could be references to the mushroom clouds produced by nuclear weapons.

The earlier mention of "the ghost of a bomb" would seem to support this conclusion-- as well as the general scene of desolation and destruction.

Furthermore, the reference to lifeless "toys" whose armor has worn off conjures the image of army generals "playing with toys," as if in a giant childrens' game-- not realizing the true implication of what they are doing. (This is a fairly common critique of the psychological nature of militarism). In this case the toys would be nuclear weapons.

Another part which makes me think it's about nuclear war is the reference to wind blowing from a "tundra" -- nuclear winter -- "where the jungle begins" (e.g. environmental chaos, with climate zones that would never naturally be adjacent to each other.... and there are only a couple things that could cause winter-like conditions in the tropics, one being nuclear war and the other being some sort of super-volcano or asteroid impact).

Also, "guns in a church" seems to be a thematic reference to the connection between religious fundamentalism and the concept of nuclear "Armageddon"-- certainly some extreme fundamentalist thought considers nuclear annihilation to legitimately have "glory attached" in the sense that these weapons have the power to vanquish the sinners/anti-christ/enemies of christianity etc. in the "final battle,"-- as a sort of perversely righteous wrath of god.

The "hope in a roadblock" would also seem to reference the "war on terror" in the sense that we "hope" security (roadblocks) will prevent some sort of catastrophic attack, such as a nuclear detonation or dirty bomb, etc. carried out (supposedly) by the other side of the fundamentalist coin-- Islamic fundamentalists.

Lastly, "the Lord will... drive us into the dirt" seems to pretty obviously indicate the extinction of the human race-- perhaps as a response to our arrogance and carelessness in playing with these "toys."

Song Meaning

Oh also, and this might be a stretch, but Edward Bond wrote a play (The War Plays), of which part 2 is called "The Tin Can People".... and it happens to be about the aftermath of a nuclear war: http://books.google.com/books?id=ASzIW5a6wYsC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Cover art for Motorcade lyrics by Beck

i cant believe no one has commented on this song.. its fucking awesome. its so chill. cant quite grasp on what it means exactly. ill get back to you on that one..

Cover art for Motorcade lyrics by Beck

this song is so fucking intense! especially when high.

Cover art for Motorcade lyrics by Beck

Whoa crazy... awesome.

Cover art for Motorcade lyrics by Beck

It has to have something to do with Scientology; what, however, I have no idea...

 
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