I am obsessed with the new Killers song Human. It is amazing. After listening to it 15 times today I decided to find out about the lyrics. After a little googling I found out that the lyrics are a reference to a comment made by Hunter S. Thompson. He said that America was raising a generation of dancers. (I couldn't find the exact quote). Thompson was a well known journalist who commit suicide in 2005. I haven't read much of his stuff, but Hunter was well known for spending time with the Hell's Angels and writing articles and eventually a book on the things that they did. Thompson is the creator of Gonzo journalism, which is where the journalist is so involved in a story that they are the central figure in the article.
The best way to describe Thompson is through his words, so here are some his most famous quotes:
Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final."—The Great Shark Hunt, 1979
"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer."—"Extreme Behavior in Aspen," February 3, 2003
"The Sixties were an era of extreme reality. I miss the smell of tear gas. I miss the fear of getting beaten."—Independent on Sunday, October 12, 1997
"Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."—Rolling Stone, February 15, 1973
"I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes."—Speech, University of Colorado, 1977
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3 comments:
last weekend I was in the dancesport competition here at BYU, and I felt very much dancer and not human... I also listened to this song like five times, dancing around my apartment... :D
I was talking about this with a group of people yesterday, and someone said the lyric evolved from a poem with the line "Are we human or are we denser?" The Killers then changed the word denser to dancer, thus changing the entire meaning of the question. They said the term dancer in this lyric is interpreted to mean puppet. Are we a generation of humans, or are we all just puppets on strings dancing according to someone else's decisions?
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