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The Most Beautiful Girl

Roger Waters
Language: English


Roger Waters

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This song dates back to the early 2000s.

Roger Waters told Uncut:

"I recorded that in Compass Point, Nassau. Back then, it was a song about a cowboy being hanged. It had a weird, stream of consciousness lyric. It talks about this hanging and it finishes up, 'When the rope hit the spot at the end of the drop the last thing he heard was her calling, "Hold on, I'm coming home.'" So it's about his relationship with a woman, in some way.

But on the new record, it's about Obama's drone warfare. The lyrics have been adapted to include the death of a specific Yemeni girl in a cruise missile attack. So the story is new, the ideas are new, but they all fit around the music of the song."
Roger Waters told Mojo the story behind the song:

"'The Most Beautiful Girl' had a life of its own. I had no idea what it was about, I just sort of liked the metre of some of the lines, and I loved the music, which keeps changing key. I had developed a big attachment to this particular Yemeni girl who's in a documentary called Dirty Wars. I became somewhat obsessed with his girl, so I thought maybe I'll take that song and make it about her, and about her being killed - about the potential relationship between a sailor on a warship and some little girl who's several hundred miles away, who he kills. What that feels like, to everybody involved, and what does it mean, and what's the point of it and why would you do that?"
She may well have been
The most beautiful girl in the world
Her life snuffed out
Like a bulldozer crushing a pearl
The secret committee
Deep in its lair
Conveniently far
From the cold desert air
Puts a tick in a box,
Turns the key in a lock
To loosen the bonds in her hair

Sleep if you can
Wrapped safe in your cloak
The tumbledown twilight
Havana smoke
Caught in your throat
Mistress Liberty's dance
Held you in its trance
Her bosoms were loaded with nectar and lances
"Well, boys", she said
"You have broken the trust.
Hold onto that stick if you must."

Take a fresh grip
On the crucible rune
The patchwork of ashes
Sweeps away love like a broom
Madness comes down
Like the crackpot of ages
The raging of angels
Cathedral of stars
Christopher Robin says
"Alice, go home now.
They're no longer changing the guard."

"Hold on", she said
"You're breaking my heart"
It's weird how the steel rails
Disappear into the dark
They clung to the ivory tower on her braids
They were never afraid of falling
But the bomb hit the spot where the numbers all stop
And the last thing they heard was her calling...

Home
Home, I'm coming home
I'm the life that you gave
I'm the children you save
I'm the promise you made
I'm the woman you crave
So hold on
I'm coming home
(Hold on, I'm coming home)

Contributed by Dq82 - 2021/2/25 - 10:08




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