Saw Howard perform this last night and got to thinking about the lyrics. Back in the 80s, I thought the "being" in this song was some kind of God figure, with the "distant hum" being the background radiation of the Big Bang..but thanks to the Internet, I see now that Howard is a Nichiren Buddhist, so it actually might be about the Eastern cyclical nature of existence with the universe being created, destroyed and created anew. Although this may also be an early "eco" song, I think that the "game" she plays might not just be 'capitalism' but the bustle of civilization as a whole which divorces humanity from the quiet susurrus of nature and the universe.
I think it was impressive that songs like "Hide and Seek" and others that had deeper political and societal meaning regularly became part of New Wave canon and climbed the pop charts. I'm thinking especially of anti-nuke and anti-war songs such as Nena's "99 Luftballons," The Fixx's "Red Skies at Night", Paul
Hardcastle's "19", Heaven 17's "Let's All Make a Bomb," Human League's "The Lebanon," Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers," Industry's "State of the Nation," Alphaville's "Forever Young", and many more of that ilk. Songs about the collapse of industry like Big Country's "Steel Town" and China Crisis' "Working With the Fire and Steel". You don't see that any more, really.
Saw Howard perform this last night and got to thinking about the lyrics. Back in the 80s, I thought the "being" in this song was some kind of God figure, with the "distant hum" being the background radiation of the Big Bang..but thanks to the Internet, I see now that Howard is a Nichiren Buddhist, so it actually might be about the Eastern cyclical nature of existence with the universe being created, destroyed and created anew. Although this may also be an early "eco" song, I think that the "game" she plays might not just be 'capitalism' but the bustle of civilization as a whole which divorces humanity from the quiet susurrus of nature and the universe.
I think it was impressive that songs like "Hide and Seek" and others that had deeper political and societal meaning regularly became part of New Wave canon and climbed the pop charts. I'm thinking especially of anti-nuke and anti-war songs such as Nena's "99 Luftballons," The Fixx's "Red Skies at Night", Paul Hardcastle's "19", Heaven 17's "Let's All Make a Bomb," Human League's "The Lebanon," Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers," Industry's "State of the Nation," Alphaville's "Forever Young", and many more of that ilk. Songs about the collapse of industry like Big Country's "Steel Town" and China Crisis' "Working With the Fire and Steel". You don't see that any more, really.