Rush (band)

Canadian musical group; rock band

Rush (1968–2018) was a Canadian progressive rock band comprising bassist, keyboardist and vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart (who replaced original drummer John Rutsey in 1974).

Song lyrics

edit

All lyrics written by Neil Peart, except as noted.

Rush (1974)

edit
  • Well I get up at 7 yeah and I go to work at 9
    I got no time for living
    I'm working all the time
    It seems to me
    I could live my life
    a lot better than I think I am.
    I guess that's why they call me,
    they call me the workin' man.

    I get home at five o'clock and I take a sip out an ice cold beer
    always seem to be wondering why there's nothing going on around here
    It seems to me
    I could live my life
    a lot better than I think I am.
    I guess that's why they call me,
    they call me the workin' man.
  • Live for yourself -- there's no one else
    More worth living for
    Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more
    • Anthem
  • The battle's over and the dust is clearing
    Disciples of the Snow Dog sound the knell
    Rejoicing echoes as the dawn is nearing
    By-Tor, in defeat, retreats to Hell.
    • By-Tor and the Snow Dog
  • Snow Dog is victorious
    The land of the Overworld is saved again
    • By-Tor and the Snow Dog
  • Quiet and pensive
    My thoughts apprehensive
    The hours drift away
    Leaving my homeland
    Playing a lone hand
    My life begins today
  • You feel there's something calling you
    You're wanting to return
    To where the misty mountains rise and friendly fires burn
    A place you can escape the world
    Where the dark lord cannot go
    Peace of mind and sanctuary by loud water's flow
    • Rivendell
  • For they marched up to Bastille Day
    La guillotine -- claimed her bloody prize
    Hear the echoes of the centuries
    Power isn't all that money buys
  • I am born, I am me, I am new, I am free.
    Look at me, I am young, sight unseen, life unsung.

2112 (1976)

edit
  • You don't get something for nothing
    You can't have freedom for free
    You won't get wise
    With the sleep still in your eyes
    No matter what your dreams might be
    • Something For Nothing
  • When they turn the pages of history
    When these days have passed long ago
    Will they read of us with sadness
    For the seeds that we let grow
    We turned our gaze
    From the castles in the distance
    Eyes cast down
    On the path of least resistance
    • A Farewell To Kings
  • Held within the pleasure dome
    Decreed by Kubla Khan
    To taste my bitter triumph, as a mad immortal man
    Never more shall I return/Escape these caves of ice
    For I have dined on honey dew and drunk the milk of paradise.
  • And the men who hold high places
    Must be the ones to start
    To mold a new reality
    Closer to the Heart
  • When life becomes so barren
    And as cold as winter skies
    There's a beacon in the darkness
    In a distant pair of eyes
    In vain to search for honor
    In vain to search for truth
    But these things can still be given
    Your love has shown me proof
    • Madrigal
  • All the same, we take our chances,
    Laughed at by Time,
    Tricked by Circumstances.
    Plus ca change,
    Plus c'est la meme chose,
    The more that things change,
    The more they stay the same.
  • So the maples formed a union
    And demanded equal rights.
    "The oaks are just too greedy;
    We will make them give us light."
    Now there's no more oak oppression,
    For they passed a noble law,
    And the trees are all kept equal
    By hatchet, axe, and saw.
  • Invisible airwaves crackle with life
    Bright antennae bristle with the energy
    Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength
    Bearing a gift beyond price
    Almost Free
  • All this machinery making modern music
    Can still be open-hearted.
    Not so coldly charted, it's really just a question
    Of your honesty, yeah, your honesty.
    • The Spirit Of Radio
  • One likes to believe in the freedom of music
    but glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity.
    • The Spirit Of Radio
  • A planet of playthings,
    We dance on the strings
    Of powers we cannot perceive
    "The stars aren't aligned -
    Or the gods are malign"
    Blame is better to give than receive.
  • You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
    If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
    You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
    I will choose a path that's clear-
    I will choose Free Will.
    • Freewill
  • Each of us
    A cell of awareness
    Imperfect and incomplete.
    Genetic blends
    With uncertain ends
    On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet.
    • Freewill
  • We are secrets to each other
    Each one's life a novel
    No-one else has read.
    Even joined in bonds of love,
    We're linked to one another
    By such slender threads.
  • We are planets to each other,
    Drifting in our orbits
    To a brief eclipse.
    Each of us a world apart,
    Alone and yet together,
    Like two passing ships.
    • Entre Nous
  • All there really is,
    The two of us,
    And we both know why we've come along.
    Nothing to explain,
    It's a part of us
    To be found within a song.
    • Different Strings
  • Wheels within wheels in a spiral array,
    A pattern so grand and complex,
    Time after time we lose sight of the way,
    Our causes can't see their effects.
  • In their own image
    Their world is fashioned-
    No wonder they don't understand
    • Natural Science
  • Science, like nature
    Must also be tamed
    With a view towards its preservation
    Given the same
    State of integrity
    It will surely serve us well
    • Natural Science
  • A modern day warrior,
    Mean, mean stride,
    Today's Tom Sawyer,
    Mean, mean pride.
  • No, his mind is not for rent
    To any god or government.
    Always hopeful, yet discontent,
    He knows changes aren't permanent,
    But change is.
    • Tom Sawyer
  • And what you say about his company
    Is what you say about society.
    • Tom Sawyer
  • Living in the limelight
    The universal dream
    For those who wish to seem
    Those who wish to be
    Must put aside the alienation
    Get on with the fascination
    The real relation
    The underlying theme
  • All the world's indeed a stage,
    And we are merely players,
    Performers and portrayers,
    Each another's audience
    Outside the gilded cage.
    • Limelight
  • They say there are strangers who threaten us,
    In our immigrants and infidels.
    They say there is strangeness, too dangerous
    In our theatres and bookstore shelves,
    That those who know what's best for us
    Must rise and save us from ourselves.
  • Leave out the fiction
    Fact is, this friction will only be worn by persistence
    Leave out conditions
    Courageous convictions will drag a dream to existence
    • Vital Signs
  • Growing up it all seems so one-sided
    Opinions all provided
    The future pre-decided
    Detached and subdivided
    In the mass production zone
    Nowhere is the dreamer
    or the misfit so alone
  • The boy lies in the grass, unmoving
    Staring at the sky
    His mother starts to call him
    As a hawk goes soaring by
    And the boy pulls down his baseball cap
    And covers up his eyes
    • The Analog Kid
  • He's got a force field and a flexible plan
    He's got a date with fate in a black sedan
    He'll play fast forward for as long as he can
    But he won't need a bed he's a digital man
    • Digital Man
  • We've got nothing to fear -- but fear itself?
    Not pain or failure, not fatal tragedy?
    Not the faulty units in this mad machinery?
    Not the broken contacts in emotional chemistry?
  • He's noble enough to know what's right but weak enough not to choose it
    He's wise enough to win the world but fool enough to lose it
  • I remember-
    How we talked and drank
    Into the misty dawn
    - I hear the voices
    We ran by the water
    On the wet summer lawn
    - I see the foot prints
    I remember-
  • I clutch the wire fence until my fingers bleed
    A wound that will not heal -- a heart that cannot feel --
    Hoping that the horror will recede
    Hoping that tomorrow, we'll all be freed
  • Suspicious-looking stranger
    Flashes you a dangerous grin
    Shadows across your window
    Was it only trees in the wind?
    Every breath a static charge
    A tongue that tastes like tin
    Steely-eyed outside to hide the enemy within...
  • One humanoid escapee
    an android on the run
    seeking freedom beneath the lonely desert sun
    • The Body Electric
  • You know how that rabbit feels
    Going under your speeding wheels
    Bright images flashing by
    Like windshields towards a fly
    Frozen in the fatal climb -
    But the wheels of time -
    Just pass you by...
    • Between the Wheels
  • So much poison in power
    The principles get left out
    So much mind on the matter
    The spirit gets forgotten about
    • Grand Designs
  • The big bang -- took and shook the world
    Shot down the rising sun
    the end was begun -- it would hit everyone
    When the chain reaction was done
    The big shots -- try to hold it back
    Fools try to wish it away
    The hopeful depend on a world without end
    Whatever the hopeless may say
  • You can do a lot in a lifetime
    If you don't burn out too fast
    You can make the most of the distance
    First you need endurance
    First you've got to last
  • They shoot without shame
    In the name of a piece of dirt
    For a change of accent
    Or the colour of your shirt
    Better the pride that resides
    In a citizen of the world
    Than the pride that divides
    When a colourful rag is unfurled
    • Territories
  • Dreams flow across the heartland
    Feeding on the fires
    Dreams transport desires
    Drive you when you're down
    Dreams transport the ones
    Who need to get out of town
    • Middletown Dreams
  • Right to the heart of the matter
    Right to the beautiful part
    Illusions are painfully shattered
    Right where discovery starts
    In the secret wells of emotion
    Buried deep in our hearts
    • Emotion Detector
  • We sometimes catch a window
    A glimpse of what's beyond
    Was it just imagination
    Stringing us along?
    More things than are dreamed about
    Unseen and unexplained
    We suspend our disbelief
    And we are entertained
  • I let my past go too fast
    No time to pause
    If I could slow it all down
    Like some captain, whose ship runs aground
    I can wait until the tide comes around
  • I thought of time and distance
    The hardships of history
    I heard the hope and the hunger
    When China sang to me...
    • Tai Shan
  • All of us get lost in the darkness
    dreamers learn to steer by the stars
    All of us do time in the gutter
    dreamers turn to look at the cars.
  • No hero in your tragedy
    No daring in your escape
    No salutes for your surrender
    Nothing noble in your fate
    Christ, what have you done?
    • The Pass
  • I had a dream of a winter garden
    a midnight rendezvous.
    Silver, blue and frozen silence
    what a fool I was for you!
    • Presto
  • Take heart from earth and weather
    the brightness of new birth
    Take heart from the harvest
    shave the harvest from the earth.
    • Anagram (For Mongo)
  • We go out in the world and take our chances
    Fate is just the weight of circumstances
    That's the way that lady luck dances
    Roll the bones.
  • Why are we here?
    Because we're here
    Roll the bones, roll the bones
    Why does it happen?
    Because it happens
    Roll the bones, roll the bones.
    • Roll The Bones
  • Well, I was only a kid, cruising around in a trance
    Prisoner of fate, victim of circumstance
    I was lined up for glory, but the tickets sold out in advance
    The way the big wheel spins.
    • The Big Wheel
  • All around this great big world
    All the crap we had to take
    Bombs and basement fallout shelters
    All our lives at stake.
  • A secret face -- a touch of grace
    A man must learn to give a little space
    A peaceful state -- a submissive trait
    A man must learn to gently dominate.
    • Animate
  • Young enough not to care too much
    About the way things used to be
    I'm young enough to remember the future --
    The past has no claim on me.
    • "Cut To The Chase
  • There is a fine line
    Between love and illusion.
    • Between Sun & Moon
  • You and I, we are pressed into these solitudes
    Color and culture, language and race
    Just variations on a theme
    Islands in a much larger stream.
    • Alien Shore
  • I've got celestial mechanics
    To synchronize my stars
    Seasonal migrations -- daily variations
    World of the unlikely and bizarre.
    • Totem, written by Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart
  • I can learn to resist
    Anything but frustration
    I can learn to persist
    With anything but aiming low.
    • Resist, written by Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart
  • A certain amount of resistance
    To the forces of the light and love
    A certain measure of tolerance
    A willingness to rise above.
  • All this time we're burning like bonfires in the dark
    A billion other blazes are shooting off their sparks
    Every spark a drifting ember of desire
    To fall upon the earth and spark another fire.
    • Peaceable Kingdom
  • Dream - Temporary madness
    Dream - A voice in the wilderness
    Dream - Unconscious revelations
    The morning says, the answer is yes.
    • Nocturne
  • One day I feel I'm on top of the world
    And the next it's falling in on me
    I can get back on
    I can get back home
    One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel,
    And the next it's rolling over me.
  • Sometimes the fortress is too strong
    Or the love is too weak
    What should have been our armor
    Becomes a sharp and angry sword
    • Armor and Sword
  • Now it's come to this
    Like we're back in the Dark Ages
    From the Middle East to the Middle West
    It's a plague that resists all science
    • The Way The Wind Blows
  • In a world where I feel so small
    I can't stop thinking big.
  • Until our final breath
    The joy and pain that we receive
    Must be what we deserve
    I was brought up to believe.
    • BU2B
  • Life goes from bad to worse
    I still choose to live
    Find a measure of love and laughter
    And another measure to give.
    • BU2B2
  • All my illusions
    Projected on her
    The ideal, that I wanted to see.
    • Halo Effect
  • All I know is that sometimes you have to be wary
    Of a miracle too good to be true
    All I know is that sometimes the truth is contrary
    Everything in life you thought you knew
    All I know is that sometimes you have to be wary
    'Cause sometimes the target is you.
    • The Wreckers
  • Thank your stars you're not that way
    Turn your back and walk away
    Don't even pause and ask them why
    Turn around and say goodbye.
    • Wish Them Well
  • The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect.
    • The Garden
  • The future disappears into memory
    With only a moment between.
    Forever dwells in that moment.
    • The Garden
edit
 
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
 
Commons
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: