A Machine Spiritual (In the People's Key) Lyrics

Lyric discussion by mumblecoreeee 

Cover art for A Machine Spiritual (In the People's Key) lyrics by Bright Eyes

i had to pause this song halfway through to think about these lyrics: "mother mountain, don't kill your unborn child his day is coming, his day is coming" it seems pretty openly anti-choice to me.

I highly highly doubt this is some sort of political-social message, if that's what you're implying..

I think it's a homage to an imagined Mother Nature, and Conor/mankind's plea (however undeserved) to the natural world to give humanity a little longer (natural disasters, climate change, a multiplicity of cause/effects that present humanity on an 'eventual' collision with the natural world we came from) because "his day is coming". The end message of the album claims that 'love' and 'enlightenment' in the face of growing fascist (Arizona immigration laws, Fascist/Neo-Nazi movements growing in Europe/Russia, Tea Party hate campaigns) and natural threat will bring humanity into a new age (2012, a self-fulfilling prophecy?). So it is a political,...

@mumblecoreeee There is some Philippine folktale called "Mother Mountain" about a woman who was treated poorly by her children, so she left their home and transformed into a mountain. I thought the lyric might have something to do with that.