Mario+R

Goodbye Blue Sky by Pink Floyd
**//The Wall album, November 1979//**


 * Summary**
 * Lyrics
 * Why I chose this song?
 * My interpretation of the song
 * Meaning of the song and brief analysis of the lyrics
 * Task

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Goodbye blue sky Goodbye

 * Goodbye Blue Sky is a song that really captivates your attention. **

==== It’s a short and sad song, the message that it gives doesn’t need to be explained with more detail. I think the length of the song is perfect, as normally long songs tire you and end up being repetitive. ==== ==== Also, I think that the melody makes you immediately imagine a situation of chaos and death, or war as it’s slow and, together with the images of the videoclip, can easily take some tears off from you. The song is quite simple. It follows a similar rhythm and speed. What I liked most about it was the capacity it has to make you feel nostalgic about a historical, past conflict and how well the lyrics syntethise the effects of the blitz, to the population. ====

[[image:http://www.videos-musicales.net/img_videos/Pink-Floyd---In-the-Flesh.jpg]]
My interpretation and the actual meaning of the song

This poignant and harrowing song by Pink Floyd can be interpretated in many slightly different ways, but what is clear, is that it talks about war. You can actually apply it to whatever bombing you want to Hiroshima, Nagasaki… specially in the lines "The flames are all long gone, But the pain lingers on" talking about the ill effects of the fallout. In fact it talks aboout the German blitz/bombings of London during a long period of World War II. Goodbye blue sky refers to basically all the bombs that were dropped during World War II in England, which created an immense amount of ash and pollution that you couldn't see the sky literally.

Roger Waters, the most famous musician of Pink Floyd (bass player, lyricist and co-lead vocalist of the rock band) wrote the song wanting to give it a double meaning though. In a way, he tries to make us see the effects of a bombing (in his case the blitzkrieg as it’s what he had lived in his life’s early years) for the population, specially for a child. The song starts with a kid saying to his mum "Look mommy, there's airplanes up in the sky". He puts a child as the protagonist of that insane situation, because in the end, they are the ones who pay the devastating consequences. Their childhoods are taken from them, they simply lose them. W ar forces kids to grow up right quick, they don’t have the chance to live the best and more important part of their lives, as they should do. In my opinion, it also makes a reference to the consequences paid by the population in general. If you look closely to the song, there’s a sort of irony in it as in the verse "When the promise of a brave new world, Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky" is an allusion to what Hitler promised his people: a "brave new world" "beneath a clear blue sky" and freedom from the burdens they were given following World War I. So as you see it’s actually an ‘ironical’ contradiction, as he's causing the opposite.

However, Roger Waters, as I mentioned before, uses his brilliance to add double meaning to this song (as he does in lots of his songs). This is more about the war against ourselves and society, than actually bombing from planes. Roger Waters grew up in the time of World War II, lost his dad during the war when he was very small (he was born in 1943 and his father died in 1945) and felt isolated and alone, became a famous and one of the best popular rock stars of the late sixties and seventies, lost his wife tragically and had a constant battle with drugs. He almost killed himself to ease the pain.

On a smaller scale, this man has basically been fighting a war within himself ever since he was young. I think Goodbye Blue Sky addresses the misconception of what we think life is, it describes us or shows us another more critical way of seeing life. We each grow up and are taught that the world is this great place and there are nice loving people out there, that God is protecting us if we are good... this song is about how those expectations and dreams can be shattered when we go out and learn how the "real" world actually is, the evilness of society. This life we live can seem all wonderful and great, then something can happen and it all comes crashing down like "falling bombs." And then you wonder why these things are happening to you, when you were always promised all these great things. You start to wonder "why you had to run for shelter when the promise of the brave new world unfurled beneath the clear blue sky..." And long after the "flames" are gone, "the pain lingers on." So what we see is that the whole song is a metaphor of human’s life, your life is a constant war. This would be the final conclusion of the song.