Word: paean
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...Talking Heads turns a fine hand to synthesizers on one of the album's best cuts, Chasing the Night-but their songs are as funny and full of 360-degree mockery as ever. Endless Vacation, which sounds like a sort of Beach Boys pastiche, is in fact a paean to homicidal teen angst that features this reflection on the mutability of contemporary existence: "Like takin' Carrie to the high school prom/ something's always goin' wrong." The Ramones are the philosopher kings of nerddom ("Every one's a secret nerd/ Every...
...these past four years, not one inch of territory has been lost to Communist aggression." He ticked off his accomplishments in cutting taxes and lowering inflation and interest rates. He claimed credit for creating 6 million new jobs. And he invariably concluded with an ode to youth and a paean to the American spirit: "We were born to a special place between these two great oceans with a unique mission to carry freedom's torch to a tired and disillusioned world. We have always been a light of hope, where all things are believed to be possible...
...ignited, a sense of optimism (like pessimism) can be self-fulfilling: the U.S. has cheered up partly because enough Americans willed such a change. It is the power of positive thinking writ large. "Magic takes over from reason at such times," wrote Author Gail Sheehy last month in a paean to the new mood. Christopher Reed, writing more acidly about the Olympics for Britain's weekly Spectator, found Americans "feeling proud about their pride." Is the bonhomie real, or is the country engaged in massive autosuggestion? When it comes to a subject as ineffable as the mood of America...
...aims in life, but then suddenly veer off to follow Reed and his GPZ to a roadside diner out in Pennsylvania, where he takes part in the everyday life of the country people, and, for once, truly becomes what he seeks--the existence of an average guy. As a paean to the simple life, and as a promise of newfound security, this song evinces unusual warmth and maturity...
...anthems of independence. All the songs but one were written by Hynde, 32, a woman who has no patience with sermons and no time for homilies. Besides the rueful and gritty Back on the Chain Gang, the album also includes a ravishing love song, 2000 Miles; a corrosive paean to suburban gentrification, My City Was Gone; a sharp bit of blue-collar feminism, Watching the Clothes; and, perhaps best of all, Thumbelina, one of the most hard-boiled lullabies ever written. Set to a kind of choogling Nashville beat, the song manages to combine love for the innocence...