Hearing Lightening Crashes transports me to Mornington, Southeast Melbourne and the golden – age rock scene. It seems to me ‘The Nineties‘ was a good decade in many respects and the music released during that era reflects it.
Lightening Crashes was released on an album called Throwing Copper which has some other excellent songs on it like Selling the Drama, All Over You and Hold Me Up. The song has a slow, deep, and meaningful build-up. You gotta earn that rise to crescendo.
The song was released in September 1994 as the third single from their second studio album, Throwing Copper. The song also topped the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart for 10 weeks and the Modern Rock Tracks chart for nine weeks. Internationally, the song reached No. 3 in Canada, No. 8 in Iceland, and No. 13 in Australia.
[Verse 1]
Lightning crashes, a new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes, the confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door
[Verse 2]
Lightning crashes, an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes, the confusion that was hers
Belongs now, to the baby down the hall
[Chorus]
Oh, now I feel it comin’ back again
Like a rollin’ thunder chasing the wind
Forces pullin’ from the center of the earth again
I can feel it
The band dedicated the song to a high-school friend, Barbara Lewis, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1993.
Lead singer Ed Kowalczyk said:
While the clip is shot in a home environment, I envisioned it taking place in a hospital, where all these simultaneous deaths and births are going on, one family mourning the loss of a woman while a screaming baby emerges from a young mother in another room. Nobody’s dying in the act of childbirth, as some viewers think. What you’re seeing is actually a happy ending based on a kind of transference of life.
References:
1. Lightening Crashes – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
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