I’m going to be cruel here. While the music is large, bordering on the spiralling mystical, the wave which is often ridden by Simple Minds, the lyrics are pure rubbish. I’d say they were written directly inspired by the feel of the music as good lyrics should but the translation is terrible. You can kind of get a glimpse of what the music is saying through the words but they are so badly concatenated & phrased that it just sounds immature & unprofessional. I’d say more time should have been taken to craft them into something which may not make direct sense to logic, but at least corresponds entirely with the music’s abstractions. These words fall short of those ends. It seems Kerr is pulling from the music the concept of the millions of conscious souls existing and passed (a big idea), and the infinite movement of this mortal march, but tries to frame it within the concept of fame & glamour, or at least narrowing the idea down to the thousands of famous people who exist or have, however the music is larger than this, in my mind at least. I’d say Kerr’s own growing fame was getting in the way of his writing some damned fine lyrics to this amazing piece of music. ‘nuff said.
I’m going to be cruel here. While the music is large, bordering on the spiralling mystical, the wave which is often ridden by Simple Minds, the lyrics are pure rubbish. I’d say they were written directly inspired by the feel of the music as good lyrics should but the translation is terrible. You can kind of get a glimpse of what the music is saying through the words but they are so badly concatenated & phrased that it just sounds immature & unprofessional. I’d say more time should have been taken to craft them into something which may not make direct sense to logic, but at least corresponds entirely with the music’s abstractions. These words fall short of those ends. It seems Kerr is pulling from the music the concept of the millions of conscious souls existing and passed (a big idea), and the infinite movement of this mortal march, but tries to frame it within the concept of fame & glamour, or at least narrowing the idea down to the thousands of famous people who exist or have, however the music is larger than this, in my mind at least. I’d say Kerr’s own growing fame was getting in the way of his writing some damned fine lyrics to this amazing piece of music. ‘nuff said.