Live - Lightning Crashes
 

Ok, what is the meaning of the lyrics?

I found this on wikipedia:

And here is a copy of the lyrics:

The first few lines suggest to me that her baby just died. "a new mother cries" = just had a baby, and she is sad (normally you should be haappy). Add to that the doctors dropping a placenta and confusion seems to me like the baby just died?

The next few line looks self explanatory, "an old mother dies" - but confusion sets in after that. "her intentions fall to the floor" WTF? "the confusion that was hers belongs now to the baby down the hall" even more WTF?

I haven't even attempted to dive into the last verse without having an understanding of the first two verses. Any ideas on this?

Thanks, L J

If you listened to much Live, Ed's lyrics aren't always transparent and sometimes trail off into abstract stuff. He's stated about that much in interviews. Just looking at Throwing Copper, go ahead and try to find a meaning behind most of the other songs on that album. If it were something like Tool, you could probably go line by line and find a few levels of meaning since everything is intentional, but with lots of bands like Live you're supposed to develop interpretations of statements.

Well, it seems most songs I can eventually decipher a meaning to their lyrics, or there is no intended meaning. However, this song seems to have an intended meaning that has me confused. I suppose it could just simply be something mean to sound good.

Whatever it may be, as much as I like the song I find my lack of complete understanding of every line to be quite annoying.

L J

Seems, fairly self explainatory, the mother gives birth to a child in the first verse (mothers cry and scream giving birth, and also cry in joy afterwards in some cases).

The angel is the child who grows up and dies, the confusion being her life, and i guess the reference to the baby down the hall in the second verse is the recipient of the donations.

No idea what the chorus and 3rd verse mean.

Actually i guess the 3rd verse refers to the recipient surviving and the 'angel' being an 'unsung hero'.

But if i didn't know the backstory i probably would have just said it represents the cycle of life, mother has child, child has child, then dies, etc.


All I can say is, don't analyze lyrics so heavily, lyrics are either, as far as i've seen, literal, metaphorical, or abstract (and in most cases random, with no ties). But if the meanings don't jump out at you, dont explore for them. It's art, and really who buys the scrap metal glued together for hard earned dough, because it has a 'deep meaning'?

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