These comments are sooo far off... except for Zoster's.
This song is about the end of the Cold War and the Fall of the Soviet Union. The line is not "I saw the decade in" but "I saw the decade END" as in the last year of the 80's, 1989, the Berlin Wall basically gave way to popular revolts and marked the beginning of the fall of the Soviet Union. It's obvious this is what the song is about just from watching the video, but anyone who was old enough to watch the evening news in that time period knows EXACTLY what the song is about and how the writer feels. The "woman on the radio" who "talks about revolution when it's already passed her by" might be a more specific reference than I know of, but the point is that the revolution was quick and sudden, and in most cases before the leaders/dictators of the USSR and satellite countries even knew what was happening.
These comments are sooo far off... except for Zoster's.
This song is about the end of the Cold War and the Fall of the Soviet Union. The line is not "I saw the decade in" but "I saw the decade END" as in the last year of the 80's, 1989, the Berlin Wall basically gave way to popular revolts and marked the beginning of the fall of the Soviet Union. It's obvious this is what the song is about just from watching the video, but anyone who was old enough to watch the evening news in that time period knows EXACTLY what the song is about and how the writer feels. The "woman on the radio" who "talks about revolution when it's already passed her by" might be a more specific reference than I know of, but the point is that the revolution was quick and sudden, and in most cases before the leaders/dictators of the USSR and satellite countries even knew what was happening.