What I really like: "Just like the canals of Mars and the Great Barrier Reef/I come to you beyond belief."
What a brilliant association. Galileo was the first person to view Mars through a telescope, and Darwin explored the Great Barrier Reef. Those two jarred the belief structures of their times with their scientific explorations. They went 'beyond belief' in a sense. Elvis is singing here about being beyond believing in romantic love (in the ways people pursue it anyway), but in those lines he's associating it with 'belief' in another sense in an intriguing, subtle and powerful way. It doesn't get better than this in pop music -- the way he makes his suggestion in those two lines is worthy of T.S. Eliot.
What I really like: "Just like the canals of Mars and the Great Barrier Reef/I come to you beyond belief." What a brilliant association. Galileo was the first person to view Mars through a telescope, and Darwin explored the Great Barrier Reef. Those two jarred the belief structures of their times with their scientific explorations. They went 'beyond belief' in a sense. Elvis is singing here about being beyond believing in romantic love (in the ways people pursue it anyway), but in those lines he's associating it with 'belief' in another sense in an intriguing, subtle and powerful way. It doesn't get better than this in pop music -- the way he makes his suggestion in those two lines is worthy of T.S. Eliot.
@dobryden yes - you are spot ON (over 8 years ago). Elvis sets poetry to music.
@dobryden yes - you are spot ON (over 8 years ago). Elvis sets poetry to music.