I just ran across one of the most amazing (and ironically, least known) Queen songs I’ve ever heard. Last I checked, it was a free MP3 download from it’s Last.fm page, so give it a listen.
To save you time, here’s an explanation of what the lyrics mean: Simply put, it’s about space travel and time dilation. More specifically, it’s about a bunch of volunteers who leave earth behind at speeds near the speed of light in search of a new place to colonize and, after being gone a year (from their perspective), return at least a hundred years later (left “in the year of ’39”, gone a year, returned “in the year of ’39”) to bring the happy news to a bittersweet meeting with their descendants. Hence the lines
Oh, so many years have gone though I’m older but a year
Your mother’s eyes in your eyes cry to me.
and the last verse, “For my life still ahead, pity me.”
It’s one of the most amazing songs I’ve ever heard. Definitely in the top 10.
UPDATE 2017-11-08: Also, if you like this, try Pushin’ the Speed of Light by Julia Ecklar & Anne Prather, another song about the heartache of relativistic space travel.
Hidden Musical Gems by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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