More lyrics and News From Neil Young's New Album - Living With War

[kpete]

Hearing Neil Young's New Album, Living With War

The first track is called "After the Garden" and, obviously, its first lines are the first lines of the album:

Won't need no shadow man
Runnin' the government

"Shock And Awe" is the fourth song on the record. Neil doesn't have planes and tanks and bombs. He has words and, ultimately, his "Shock and Awe" will be long remembered after Bush and his shock and awe are nothing but an unfortunate footnote in history books.

Back in the days of shock and awe
We came to liberate them all
History was the cruel judge of overconfidence
Back in the days of shock and awe.
Thousands of children scarred for life
Millions of tears for a soldier's wife
Both sides are losing now...

The next song is the one that really lays it on the line, the one all his accumulated moral authority allows him to write, the one everyone wants to know about, "Let's Impeach the President." Maybe his pal Steve Bing should send the lyrics to all the wet-finger-in-the-wind Democratic senators who refuse to back Russ Feingold's moderate censure resolution. Instinctively, Neil must have known the song is going to cause an uproar and become the focus of the album. So he crafted an absolute masterpiece, immune from the barbs and arrows that will surely come.

Let's impeach the president for lying
Misleading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

The album ends with a song about somebody's buddy who went to Iraq, "Roger and Out" and it goes into a stirring rendition of "America the Beautiful" sung by a 100 piece choir. Elliot assured me it was comprised of the best voices in L.A. It sounded that way. And they're singing all over the album. In fact one of them, Alicia Morgan, an articulate and idealistic blogger, as well as a wonderful singer, was interviewed the other day in The Independent, a U.K. newspaper.

I spoke to some of my old comrades at Reprise today. They're still getting their heads around a marketing strategy for the album, although it looks like an early summer release, perhaps with songs streaming on the internet early and probably a single to radio "very soon."

more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howie-klein/hearing-neil-youngs-new-_b_19378.html

[tuvor]

1. Glad his message is becoming more mainstream.

The lyrics, though, don't really inspire like I'd've expected them to, coming from Neil Young. To be honest, I've seen way better contributions from DU members.

Still, I'll be glad to see this CD come out.

[npincus]

2. OMG- a masterpiece created in 9 days.

I have been a Neil Young fan for many years. Whether or not a person appreciates his vocals (I do), he is an incredible composer and lyricist.

i would look forward to any new Neil Young album, in the vein, musically, of his earlier work (Harvest, Rust Never Sleeps)- but the subject and mesage of this one, delivered in the voice and music of NY, is a gift.

His record company doesn't have to worry about marketing; the buzz surrounding this will get the message out, and I will bet anyone here this album goes platinum. Not just in the US, Bush-haters in Canada and around the globe will be buying this one.