So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
Last night I stood at your doorstep
Trying to figure out what went wrong
You just slipped something into my palm and you were gone
I could smell the same deep green of summer
'Bove me the same night sky was glowin'
In the distance I could see the town where I was born
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
A long walk home
In town I pass Sal's grocery
Barber shop on South Street
I looked in their faces*
They're all rank strangers to me*
Well Veteran's Hall high upon the hill
Stood silent and alone
The diner was shuttered and boarded
With a sign that just said "gone"
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
Here everybody has a neighbor
Everybody has a friend
Everybody has a reason to begin again
My father said "Son, we're lucky in this town,
It's a beautiful place to be born.
It just wraps its arms around you,
Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone"
"Your flag flyin' over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone.
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
Trying to figure out what went wrong
You just slipped something into my palm and you were gone
I could smell the same deep green of summer
'Bove me the same night sky was glowin'
In the distance I could see the town where I was born
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
A long walk home
In town I pass Sal's grocery
Barber shop on South Street
I looked in their faces*
They're all rank strangers to me*
Well Veteran's Hall high upon the hill
Stood silent and alone
The diner was shuttered and boarded
With a sign that just said "gone"
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
Here everybody has a neighbor
Everybody has a friend
Everybody has a reason to begin again
My father said "Son, we're lucky in this town,
It's a beautiful place to be born.
It just wraps its arms around you,
Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone"
"Your flag flyin' over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone.
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
Hey pretty darling, don't wait up for me
Gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
It's gonna be a long walk home
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
More Featured Meanings
Ave Grave
Thee More Shallows
Thee More Shallows
Corpse I Fell In Love With
Gadjits, The
Gadjits, The
He reuses the verse melody from the previous album's "Dirty Little Religion", the topics of the verses are all over the place, and he packs too many words into one line (goes to show...) and too few in another (it's pretty hard to find), and rhymes "Henley Regatta" with "Persona non grata", but gets away with it all as only he could.
Show Me a Little Shame
Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals
Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals
He certainly did earn that reputation.
Fortnight
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift
The song 'Fortnight' by Taylor Swift and Post Malone tells a story about strong feelings, complicated relationships, and secret wishes. It talks about love, betrayal, and wanting someone who doesn't feel the same. The word 'fortnight' shows short-lived happiness and guilty pleasures, leading to sadness. It shows how messy relationships can be and the results of hiding emotions. “I was supposed to be sent away / But they forgot to come and get me,” she kickstarts the song in the first verse with lines suggesting an admission to a hospital for people with mental illnesses. She goes in the verse admitting her lover is the reason why she is like this. In the chorus, she sings about their time in love and reflects on how he has now settled with someone else. “I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary / And I love you, it’s ruining my life,” on the second verse she details her struggles to forget about him and the negative effects of her failure. “Thought of callin’ ya, but you won’t pick up / ‘Nother fortnight lost in America,” Post Malone sings in the outro.
Holiday
Bee Gees
Bee Gees
@[Diderik:33655] "Your a holiday!" Was a popular term used in the 50s/60s to compliment someone on their all around. For example, not only are they beautiful, but they are fun and kind too ... just an all around "holiday".
I think your first comment is closer to being accurate. The singer/song writers state "Millions of eyes can see, yet why am i so blind!? When the someone else is me, its unkind its unkind". I believe hes referring to the girl toying with him and using him. He wants something deeper with her, thats why he allows himself to be as a puppet (even though for her fun and games) as long as it makes her happy. But he knows deep down that she doesnt really want to be serious with him and thats what makes him.
Probably his best song in years, absolutely brilliant.
Mikromgr is correct. Long Walk Home is a metaphor describing how far the US has moved away from it's ideals of freedom, decency, civil liberties, economic fairness, etc
@wesg01 It definitely MATTERS that we have (seemingly) DRIFTED away from our ideals. I wonder if we’ve ever truly inhabited those “ideals”…<br /> <br /> I think now the best you can hope for is that the smart people outnumber the morons in Congress, if not in the actual nation/people, which was probably always the case.
@wesg01 It definitely MATTERS that we have (seemingly) DRIFTED away from our ideals. I wonder if we’ve ever truly inhabited those “ideals”…<br /> <br /> I think now the best you can hope for is that the smart people outnumber the morons in Congress, if not in the actual nation/people, which was probably always the case. <br /> <br /> Point being, people, leaders, representatives - whomever - have always used the USA’s “Charter” to whip up Nationalism (definitely NOT “patriotism”. True patriots don’t cynically use the Constitution against the very people who claim to hold it sacred, yet, don’t even come CLOSE to understanding what it means to be American - They ARE authorities on being ‘Murrican, though). And because their constituents are easily fooled, they believe that we are All willfully ignorant lol
As Bruce told the New York Times:
“The singer in ‘Long Walk Home,’ his world has changed. The things that he thought he knew, the people who he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers. The world that he knew feels totally alien. I think that’s what’s happened in this country in the past six years.”
Yep, this song is about change. Change happens over time, but sometimes you dont notice it while it's happening... only later on, when you look back to an earlier time and wonder where the time went...
I have aways thought that this song is the coming home song. A reflect or update to some of Bruce's earlier work about getting out, such as Born to Run or Thunder Road (i.e. "I am pulling out of here to win"). In his early days Bruce wanted nothing more than to break away from the life he had back then. But when we get away and we make it, choose a different life or whatever, in the end our home town, our mum our dad is still with us for ever. And as Bruce sings it is that "certain things are set in stone, who we are, what we do and what we wont". I am not from the US. But I am from small town NZ and I grew up listening to Bruce and even quoted some of his songs about getting out on my wall. I did just that, have lived in a number of countries, but now as I am older i appreciate what my home town means.
Actually not quite that either. Bruce is again getting stuff off his chest about our country. Great music though.
He feels we have departed from the core values of America. The attitudes of a lot of people in his home town in Jersay make them seem like "rank strangers" to him. It's going to be a long walk home to the place he feels we belong.
I'm gonna go ahead and say that this song uses the relationship with the girl as a metaphor for the relationship with the country. Bruce is saying that it's a long walk home to finish what was ruined. Something was slipped inside his palm, something that couldn't be said. Unspeakable things have occurred in the country over the years. The line about the flag "Who we are... what we'll do... and what we won't." Bruce is saying that the American people have let things go to the point where we're not who we once were. Absolutely brilliant song. The line about the flag over the courthouse damn near brings tears to my eyes whenever I hear it, such a harsh reality we have to face. Bruce had tears in his eyes while singing this in concert.
i think its a mixture, maybe a man has come back from service to his hometown and its all different, possibly for the worst. Or maybe it could be about america as a whole, im stuck between those to ideas. But in the chorus it says "hey pretty darling dont wait up for", this could mean one of two things. Literally he is telling his girl not to wait for him to come back and to move on in life. Or it could be telling his hometown/America to carry on its journey and not to wait for him to catch up.
The love he once felt and received, be it America, be it his lover, is gone...
wrestlewithjime - hate to break it to you but you're wrong. It's about a guy coming back to the town he grew up in and not recognizing anything, everything being different etc.