In 1987, the Pet Shop Boys released an album called Actually which included a song called “King’s Cross.” Some of this song’s lyrics:
“Only last night I found myself lost
By a station called King’s Cross
Dead and wounded on either side
You know it’s only a matter of time…”
A short time later, a major fire at the King’s Cross underground station in London killed a number of people.
:eek:
That is pretty weird.
My example is different. These lines from the U2 song Please were written about a bombing in Ireland but they got the song out and dusted it off last fall for the last leg of the Elevation tour.
September… streets capsizing… spilling over and down the drain
… shards of glass splinters like rain but you could on feel your own pain…
Not premonitory LYRICS, per se, but I just read in Harper’s index about a band called “I am the World Trade Center”. Which happened to have a song called “September”. Which happend to be track #11.
Came out in June of 2001.
Not exactly premonitory but Rush’s song Subdivisions came to mind during the Columbine shootings.
Looking at the photos of the well maintained neighborhoods:
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown
The personalities:
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone
The fact that they didn’t conform or fit in…
Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
The shootings:
Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth
Back in 1975, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel clearly foresaw the rise of Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition, as you can see in these prophetic lyrics from “My Little Town”:
“After it rains, there’s a rainbow,
And all of its colors are black.”
Kurt Cobain swore that he didn’t have a gun. I guess he lied.
How about Ted Nugent’s "Stormtroopin’ " ? It’s hard to believe that that was written in the 70’s, before the War On Some Drug Users and the general militarization of the police had really gotten going.
in the early morning hour there’s a din in the air
mayhem on the loose
stormtroopers comin’ and you better be prepared
got no time to choose
…
comin’ down the street
jackboots steppin’ high
got to make a stand
they’re lookin’ thru your window
listenin’ to your phone
keep a gun in your hand
…
where’s the justice?
where’s the law?
*
Interesting…I had " Come out and Play" by the Offspring (Smash, 1994) come to mind instead when all the school shootings started.
Freaky - when I saw your thread title I was about to come in and post exactly this.
Also making this freaky: in the PSB film It Couldn’t Happen Here this song is played to the sequence of a commuter covered in burning newspaper…