Best song ever

Lightning Crashes is lyrically on par with John Lennon's Imagine as the best song ever written. The gradual build of music in Lightning Crashes puts it at #1 (source: me). It starts as just guitar and soft singing for almost 2 minutes, then the bass comes in and another 30 second later, a hint of drums. A minute of building, 20 second instrumental, 20 seconds bringing the vocals back, an amazing drum ... whatever a set of drum "notes" are called ... at 4:20. I couldn't begin to guess at how many times I've heard the song in the last 14 years, but I've never bothered to pick apart the meaning of the lyrics.

Watching the video for the song, you see a baby born and an old woman dying. And a bald angel surrounded by cats. Most of the video was done with overexposing the film so you see "ghosts", adding to the sense of the passage of time and life. This is hands down, Live's best video. Yes, even better than the video for Heaven, which I once referred to as "a Skittles commercial, with no Skittles." It's also one of the few videos with no instruments shown. The guys are just reacting to the music.

lightning crashes, a new mother cries
her placenta falls to the floor
the angel opens her eyes
the confusion sets in
before the doctor can even close the door

lightning crashes, an old mother dies
her intentions fall to the floor
the angel closes her eyes
the confusion that was hers
belongs now, to the baby down the hall

oh now feel it comin' back again
like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
i can feel it

lightning crashes, a new mother cries
this moment she's been waiting for
the angel opens her eyes
pale blue colored iris, presents the circle
and puts the glory out to hide, hide

oh now feel it comin' back again
like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
i can feel it
i can feel it

...I started typing out my thoughts about the meaning of each line of the song, but that's not necessary. As Ed Kowalczyk once told me, he doesn't "think of it as a song about living and dying anymore, now it's a song about rising and falling". Life is short and (hopefully) brilliant, like a flash of lightning. It's the thunder we create that keeps us going.