First of all, why would WESTERN NY have a Hudson River clean-up? Somebody please buy the woman an atlas!
Sorry, stuff like that bugs me. :P
But anyway, I think the "grass is always greener" thing is a part of it, but I also think this song is about glamor and surface beauty vs. history (all those references to ghosts and haunted houses!) and a sort of authenticity.
The song opens with SoCal in danger of falling into the ocean; for all the Hollywood mythology, all the perceived fabulousness, it's all so transient and unstable. And phony: in the last verse SoCal tries to compensate by setting up an ersatz "theme park" of WNY! Whereas Western NY is solid, weighted down by "heavy snows" and a deep sense of history...even if that history is so romanticized because it's better than the present, as with all those rust-belt towns that have "hit the skids."
This song is pointing out the value of all that history and the sense of community, even though our culture doesn't always recognize it: "Sometimes the stakes are bogus, sometimes the fast lane hits a fork..." Sometimes what we think we want isn't as satisfying as we expected it to be.
First of all, why would WESTERN NY have a Hudson River clean-up? Somebody please buy the woman an atlas!
Sorry, stuff like that bugs me. :P
But anyway, I think the "grass is always greener" thing is a part of it, but I also think this song is about glamor and surface beauty vs. history (all those references to ghosts and haunted houses!) and a sort of authenticity.
The song opens with SoCal in danger of falling into the ocean; for all the Hollywood mythology, all the perceived fabulousness, it's all so transient and unstable. And phony: in the last verse SoCal tries to compensate by setting up an ersatz "theme park" of WNY! Whereas Western NY is solid, weighted down by "heavy snows" and a deep sense of history...even if that history is so romanticized because it's better than the present, as with all those rust-belt towns that have "hit the skids."
This song is pointing out the value of all that history and the sense of community, even though our culture doesn't always recognize it: "Sometimes the stakes are bogus, sometimes the fast lane hits a fork..." Sometimes what we think we want isn't as satisfying as we expected it to be.