Most people likely wouldn’t connect these two bands for obvious reasons, but on two songs, eight years apart, we get the sense the world is rapidly falling apart because those who are supposed to be the wise ones are revealed to be only fools.
In 2007, Bruce Springsteen released his fifteenth studio album, Magic, which expressed his disillusionment with American society in general after five years of war in the Middle East and his concerns about the George W. Bush Administration’s response to 9-11 in particular. At the time, Pitchfork magazine described it as “a surprisingly complex album that hides its disillusionment deep within its music, mingling it with a weary optimism that has not diminished with age.” The ninth track, “Last to Die,” represents perhaps the most overt criticism on the entire album, and also stands as one of Springsteen’s darkest efforts outside of Nebraska. The song imagines a couple, literally driving into nowhere, taking “the highway ‘til the road went black,” and attempting to take stock of what’s left of their lives, marking the “Truth and Consequences” on a figurative map. Somewhere on this bleak journey, “a voice drifted up from the radio, We saw the voice from long ago,” and the song launches into an even bleaker and more confounding chorus:
Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake
The last to die for a mistake
Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break
Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake
Springsteen, wisely, does not specifically mention the Iraq War, or that the quote itself comes from John Kerry after he returned from Vietnam and became a fervent anti-war protester. Listening to it in 2007, the reference was unmistakable, but overtime the phrase has become generalized, applicable literally to war or more figuratively to any tragic situation where we keep compounding our errors for whatever reason. The second verse likewise compounds the first, when the speaker reveals that the couple has a child in the back seat, but that hasn’t stopped them from running, “just counting the miles you and me” and even the idea that there are truth and consequences has faded from their minds. In another obvious reference that grew more universal over the years, “We don’t measure the blood we’ve drawn anymore, We just stack the bodies outside the door.”
After repeating the chorus, Suzie Tyrell’s violin adding a mournful sound to the proceedings, the couple and their child arrive in some unknown city, but find no solace. The war imagery and resulting hopelessness permeate the scene, a sun “sets in flames as the city burns” and “another day gone down as the night turns.” In the midst of this desolation, the family can only hold each other in their heart “as things fall apart.” Throughout, they are accompanied by more disembodied voices rising up from nowhere. This time, there is a TV in a “downtown window flushed with light,” and a news anchor promises the “Faces of the dead at five” while a homeless man stands in the street, petitioning the “drivers as we pass by.” In between, Springsteen delivers the line that stands out above all others, yet another that at the time was perceived as an indictment of neocons in the Bush administration, but now stands as a universal truth: The wisemen, they’re all fools, what to do?
In 2015, Duran Duran released their fourteenth studio album, Paper Gods. The British vanguard for the new wave and overall pop-rock masters are certainly not known for the sort of bleak social commentary Springsteen is famous for, but in their own unique way, the title track touches upon the same theme from a different angle. Rather than war or an indictment of those who lead us, the focus is on popular culture and the entertainment industry, where we are asked to “Bow to the paper gods, In a world that is paper thin, The fools in town, Are ruling now, Bleeding from paper cuts, And money for headshots, Fools leading, who needs it?” From the vantage of a band that was once among the most popular in the world, a cultural and musical phenomenon cranking out legendary 1980’s hits, it’s easy to see this as a direct indictment of a music industry that has left them behind. In this view, they were the real gods once upon a time, but they have been replaced by those who have the show without the substance. The song avoids taking on the music industry directly, however, telling various tales about consumer culture instead.
“Go runnin’ to be first in line, for what? Nobody cares! The next thing you must have, some piece with a matching bag, It’s nothing to be glad about or sad when you forget it about.” The consumer is contrasted with the producer “The slave..in the sweatshop putting trainers on your feet, And walking’ through the rain, Oblivious to pain.” In the second verse, voyeurism comes into play, where a woman stares “out in her underwear from your computer screen, It’s all on sale for dirty cash, we can wash it clean, So hang it out online, confess and you’ll feel fine.” This time, the dark side of the lyrics are not how these things are made, but what lies beneath the surface, how you know people are who they claim, and the many faces we wear in real life and the virtual world. How can we choose between them? If “you’ve got the time to spare, we want to know Which name you’re wearing, And when the final curtain finally comes down, We’ll all be in the party room, No why’s, or if’s, or how?” Ultimately, the song concludes, rather darkly, that the world has lost its mind bowing to these paper gods, “The total human race became a basket case,” but perhaps even worse, nobody knows or cares. “It’s nothing to lose face about it, It’s really not the place to doubt it.”
Admittedly, most people likely wouldn’t connect these two songs or bands, much less be tremendous fans of both given their disparate styles and genres, but here, we have a sense from two different angles that the world is rapidly falling apart because those who are supposed to be the wise ones are revealed to be only fools. The emperor doesn’t merely have no clothes. He has no mind. The way Springsteen puts it, people are actually dying because our leaders don’t know what they’re doing, and taken literally it is difficult to see how things have improved since 2007. The establishment has never reckoned with their mistakes. There remains not a war in the world that the uni-party, deep state, or whatever you prefer to call it doesn’t want to fight or at least fund, and whether or not our policies have the intended effect is irrelevant. When you have the temerity to point out their failure, they accuse you of a failure that is their own. Duran Duran provides the cultural component, how we worship figures that are not worthy because beneath the facade there’s nothing there, or even worse, what’s there is dark and evil, nothing like the outside show. In both cases, there are those outside the establishment, be it political, media, or whatever given how difficult it is tell one from the other these days, who continue to worship their so called betters, either enamored by the power and prestige or currying favor for themselves, blind to their failures, though they too are on the outside looking in.
To any student of history, this should not be surprising: The establishment’s track record, whatever the era, has always been abysmal and the average person has always paid the price. Despite their supposed education and expertise, the experts are as wrong as often as they are right, about matters large and small. Whether it be the widespread insistence that massive war in Europe was impossible right until World War I began and millions died, or Harry Truman – who referred to this cohort as the “striped pants boys” for the fancy suits that hid a lack of substance – stunned to learn that the Russians had developed a nuclear weapons years before the State Department and the military predicted, the great moments in history frequently hinge on those who defy the consensus. The leader, like Harry Truman, who refuses to be confined by their limitations, or the scientist like Albert Einstein that rejects the dogma of the day. Few remarkable personalities have ever become remarkable because they conformed to the prevailing wisdom and did what they were told. In the context of this post, there would not be a Bruce Springsteen if he didn’t build his career around following his own unique artistic vision and instead copied someone else. There would not be a Duran Duran if they kept playing the same Led Zeppelin inspired 70’s rock. The average person, this author included, will not reach those heights, but to answer Springsteen’s question, what to do? The answer is simple: Go your own way, think for yourself, study the world, and sift through the shit because the wisemen have always been fools.
LAST TO DIE
PAPER GODS
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 