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I am aware of a red tide line but I won’t stop swimming here
Fires ablaze and sirens in the night, things will get hotter
Ohh, two days on the land and then ten months on the water
Awaiting the big wave, now I’m waving a kiss to Vancouver
All of the months of wondering why I’m just not good enough
Over the years and under the rug, things will get heavy
And only a few days after it already
Or drawing a fine line, and now I’m waving goodbye
To my city, my lover, my friend
Vancouver, they’re tearing us apart
Make it pretty, the way the world sees this city
The way the world sees us from afar
Ohh, the way we are
The way we’re meant to be
It’s a different city now
It’s a different city now.
Fires ablaze and sirens in the night, things will get hotter
Ohh, two days on the land and then ten months on the water
Awaiting the big wave, now I’m waving a kiss to Vancouver
All of the months of wondering why I’m just not good enough
Over the years and under the rug, things will get heavy
And only a few days after it already
Or drawing a fine line, and now I’m waving goodbye
To my city, my lover, my friend
Vancouver, they’re tearing us apart
Make it pretty, the way the world sees this city
The way the world sees us from afar
Ohh, the way we are
The way we’re meant to be
It’s a different city now
It’s a different city now.
Lyrics submitted by tricialamb
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Taken from an interview:
Worcester admits that other songs change their meaning, particularly ‘Big Wave Goodbye’. Initially inspired by the famed earthquake and flood that threatens to strike Vancouver in the as-yet undetermined future, it quickly took on a more metaphorical meaning “about the big wave propelling us along as radio acceptable music, because we’ve been told our kind of music isn’t radio kind of music because we don’t fit the musical standards people claim radio has.”
“Coming back, I can’t wait to come back and play that song, because it’s my city and when I sing I try to put myself in the same place when I wrote it. I’m different now, but it doesn’t lose meaning, it just transfers.”