Lyrically Speaking for May 11th
Good Sunday to everyone! This week, Lyrically Speaking makes a comeback with a song that’s been almost a daily-listen for me. Sometimes you take a chance on a band based on a song you hear on the radio. In my case, this is with the band Linkin Park.
Now to say that I really don’t like them, would be an understatement. I’ve never really ‘gotten’ their music and felt they were too much of a sell-out. I heard the song “Shadow of the Day” on the radio because my iPod adaptor broke and it was all I had when driving into work. I didn’t know it was Linkin Park and was surprised to hear they had a new sound. This was enough for me to give their new album a try. Sure enough, there’s some good stuff on there.
One song in particular is very inspiring and is also political. The lyrics are obvious and I must say that the song is effective in generating emotions as I listen. I think that the words are powerful and reflective of the current state of America. The melody and light-rapping style make this even more powerful.
From Linkin Park, this is Hands Held High:
Turn my mike up louder I got to say something
Light weights step to the side when we come in
Feel it in your chest the syllables get pumping
People on the street they panic and start running
Words on loose leaf sheet complete coming
I jump in my mind and summon the rhyme, I’m dumping
Healing the blind I promise to let the sun in
Sick of the dark ways we march to the drum and
Jump when they tell us that they wanna see jumping
Fuck that I wanna see some fists pumping
Risk something, take back what’s yours
Say something that you know they might attack you for
Cause I’m sick of being treated like I have before
Like it’s stupid standing for what I’m standing for
Like this war’s really just a different brand of war
Like it doesn’t cater the rich and abandon poor
Like they understand you in the back of the jet
When you can’t put gas in your tank
These fuckers are laughing their way to the bank and cashing the cheque
Asking you to have compassion and have some respect
For a leader so nervous in an obvious way
Stuttering and mumbling for nightly news to replay
And the rest of the world watching at the end of the day
In their living room laughing like “what did he say?”
[Chorus:]
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
In my living room watching but I am not laughing
Cause when it gets tense I know what might happen
World is cold the bold men take action
Have to react or get blown into fractions
Ten years old it’s something to see
Another kid my age drugged under a jeep
Taken and bound and found later under a tree
I wonder if he had thought the next one could be me
Do you see the soldiers they’re out today
They brush the dust from bullet proof vests away
It’s ironic at times like this you pray
But a bomb blew the mosque up yesterday
There’s bombs in the buses, bikes, roads
Inside your market, your shops, your clothes
My dad he’s got a lot of fear I know
But enough pride inside not to let that show
My brother had a book he would hold with pride
A little red cover with a broken spine
On the back, he hand-wrote a quote inside
When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die
Meanwhile, the leader just talks away
Stuttering and mumbling for nightly news to replay
And the rest of the world watching at the end of the day
both scared and angry like “what did he say?”
[Chorus x6]
[x6]
With hands held high into the sky so blue,
As the ocean opens up to swallow you.
