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.
