Album: Moving Pictures
Year: 1981
. . .
All things considered, “Limelight” is probably my favorite Rush song, and is definitely on the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Prog Divsion.
I did a fair amount of reading about Rush in prep for all of this, and of my takeaways was that Alex Lifeson was the always-joking extrovert, and Neal Peart was the bookish introvert. Which left Geddy in the middle like Derek Smalls, I guess. Anyways, after Permanent Waves made Rush huge stars once and for all, Peart penned a set of lyrics that perfectly described his ambivalence about the whole situation, kind of a precursor to the things future reluctant rock stars like Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan might say in interviews.
Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage
Driven by Lifeson’s big Who-like riff, “Limelight” stops and starts, steps and stutters throughout its verses — dramatizing that very ambivalence — though it picks up a bit in between the verses.
Cast in this unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact
Or as Michael Stipe would sing over a decade later, “alone in a crowd.” In fact, one might surmise that the insanely gynormous drum kit that Peart eventually surrounded himself with was a physical manifestation of those barriers, at least on a subconscious level. Though in the song, those barriers are clearly psychological, a way to keep himself sane and able to focus on the most important thing, the music. And that’s the push and pull, isn’t it? You want people to hear your music, enjoy your music, be enthusiastic about your music, but there’s a price, as Geddy Lee sings in the chorus.
Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme
I love everything about this chorus. I love how it starts slow and down — Lifeson jingling and jangling — and then takes a turn between “those who wish to seem” and “those who wish to be” the whole band coming together to push the song forward around what is absolutely their most gorgeous melody. Which Getty Lee sings fantastically. I know that his voice is the #1 gating factor for Rush, but the way he wraps his vocal around “a-lee-en-a-shun” and “fa-cee-nay-shun” is absolutely fantastic.
Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can’t pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend
In other words, “sorry if I was a dick to you, if I am a dick to you, if I will be a dick to you in the future.” But, of course, it’s unreasonable for us fans to assume that every single famous person we meet wants to meet us. I mean, some, yeah. And we dine out on those meetings for the rest of our lives, but as an introvert myself, I totally understand what they mean here.
I experienced the tiniest bit of fame when I was a DJ on KFSR, and it was weird, and I sometimes didn’t handle it all that well. And yet, the problem is that some of us introverts are still driven to put our art — however we define it — out into the world. It ain’t gonna happen, but I’d be thrilled if the audiences for either Certain Songs or Sedan Delivery expanded beyond stranger friends and friendly strangers. I’d also be terrified.
All the world’s indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another’s audience
Outside the gilded cage
That opening couplet is, of course, a shoutout to Hamlet, as well as their live album. And I just now realized that it was funny — not ironic, Rush really didn’t do irony — that they called their live album All The World’s A Stage when they recorded it in a single city. After the second chorus, Alex Lifeson takes another long jazzy, noisy solo over what starts as a relatively sedate backing by Lee and Peart, though Peart eventually does his thing as a clever bit of overdubbing of Lifeson’s jingling and jangling guitar leads us back into one last sublime chorus.
“Limelight” was the final track on the first side of Moving Pictures, a record that still gets regularly feted as both one of the greatest hard rock albums and one of the greatest prog albums ever recorded, and even if side two wasn’t quite as strong, it did point the way for some the synth-heavy and reggae-tinged songs that would dominate their 1980s. Forty years down the line, in an era where bands as diverse as Radiohead and Fucked Up dig into the prog playbook on a regular basis (have you heard Fucked Up’s Year of the Horse yet?) it remains a touchstone and the high point of both Rush’s music and their sales.
“Limelight” Official Music Video
“Limelight” live in 1981
“Limelight” live in 2007
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