#1

Arcade Fire- Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)

Jokes aside, here’s the real number 1 song of the countdown! I can safely say now without saying ‘one of’ before anything that this is the most beautiful song of my lifetime, the best song of my lifetime… in my opinion. I know because there’s been 899 songs leading up to this, it’s probably a disappointment but if there was a song that lived up to the expectations of ‘number 1’ then the song would just be too much that it wouldn’t be number 1. In music, when something has ‘everything’ it generally has a worse effect, nobody can pull it off. I like this song so much because I’m me and this song has had the biggest emotional impact on my life. Everyone has their ‘moments’ with songs and this song, I have probably had the biggest ‘moment’ with, lame I know.

I chose the live version because that video has given me the biggest goosebumps I’ve ever seen. Every line he sings is filled with emotion, and works perfectly with the words and the music. Over this countdown I’ve posted negative songs, about all the things that get you down, and that are wrong about life, but what overcomes them is yourself and everything ‘feeling’-wise that life brings, there are so many great feelings, it’s a long life, it gives you a lot of happy memories, it might not make sense. But who wants it to make sense? It’s there for the taking, and I like the idea of making the most of it. This song has the emotions that represent these thoughts, they love to sing about all the beauties of being young and innocent, why not aim to keep your mind, thoughts and feelings young forever? If it makes you happy go for it.

Anyway the whole story of this song is of someone who sees his parents becoming emotionally dead, cold, lifeless, colourless snow burying their thoughts and emotions. So to get out of that life that really doesn’t attract him, he digs a tunnel to the house of the person who makes him happiest, who turns all the negative thoughts he has into happy ones, into precious ones he can remember and cherish - “You change all the lead, sleeping in my head to gold”. They uses a reference to changing ‘lead to gold’ here as a lovely metaphor for this.

Then he decides to let go of everything society has for him and live out in the snow with his loved one, he doesn’t want to live in the society that is built because it would only bring him down, and destroy him. In this snow he grows his hair long - a metaphor for something bigger, basically saying he does what he wants because nobody is there to tell him otherwise. And his skin grows thicker, ie letting us know that no matter what other people say about him, he can survive in any condition, because humans are built to adapt. Relating to the whole ‘don’t believe what people say’ sort of theme of ‘Rebellion (Lies)’.

This is one interpretation, however the other I think of is just the passage of time in life and how beautiful it is that you have so much time on the Earth and so many happy memories to cherish. However the beauty of the song is that it’s so emotional in a melancholic way too, it’s letting you know that even if you do escape there is a lot of love you miss out on. For example in the story it shows us that in escaping together, they forget everything about life, and they find that really saddening. For example in ‘Then we tried to name our babies, But we forgot all the names that, The names we used to know, But sometimes, we remember our bedrooms, And our parent’s bedrooms, And the bedrooms of our friends, Then we think of our parents, Well, what ever happened to them”.

What I find beautiful about this song is that it has the purest emotion I’ve ever felt in a song, like when I listened to it, it’s what made me realize what music is for, and how much it really means, and how expressive it can be. This song actually spurred on doing this countdown in all honesty. It is the most perfect song for winter, it is about the most powerful emotion I’ve probably ever felt, and the most powerful emotion I believe that’s in this world. It’s really about finding warmth and comfort from the cold life you have in someone else. Covering the themes of love making you ‘forget the world’ because you’re happy enough as you are, and letting it ‘purify the colours’ and purify your mind’, bringing colour back to all your thoughts and melting the snow covering your hands. Watch it live, it’s an even better experience than this video.

And that’s it folks

Album: Funeral

Genre: Indie Rock

Favourite Part: The part when Win Butler’s voice cracks a little bit from the overwhelming emotion in “The names we used to know” and “well whatever happened to them?”

Favourite Lyric: “You change all the lead

Sleeping in my head to gold
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn 
The song I’ve been trying to sing”