(The) Harvey Danger Database

Wrecking Ball

Recorded

Release history

Credits

Alternate versions

Lyrics

Tear down the bearing wall,
put up a picture window.
Something to look through
at the bastard colors, burnt sienna.

Put down the wrecking ball.
Who has a friend, who needs one?
I’ve got a way to get to work in almost any city.
Doesn’t matter where:
take a needle, I won’t be there.
Privileges forsaken there.
Liberties I’ve taken take me nowhere.

Put down the wrecking ball.
Don’t let a childhood linger.
They’ll take the world apart
and break my baby brother’s finger
so he can’t shake my hand.
Guard the dead against my legacy
and lack the wound no more.
Run from nowhere, nowhere follows you.

Burn down the house.
Make sure the family is inside.
Nothing more to tether you,
also no one there to catch you crying.
Nothing but my famous pillow
and my father’s rocking chair:
you get a sliver when you sit there.
Every mess I make, I make
a run for nowhere, nowhere follows you.
Nowhere follows you…
Nowhere follows…

Quotes

SCN: “Wrecking Ball,” our first convincing “serious” song, based on a combination of Thomas Wolfe, Thomas Mann, and a heroic dose of native alienation; I was thrilled that Jeff was coaxed into playing the fiddle across one of Aaron’s signature bass leads, elsewise the lyric might have dragged the song into an inescapable juvenility; instead, it sounds to me like a perfect evocation of what it felt like to be 22 and lost, far from home.10A

AMH: We listened to this many times in Jeff’s room in the Wedgwood house after we got home from the studio. It was jaw-droppingly amazing to hear that sound coming from our band.10A

JJL: Probably my favorite track on this album, I still like it as much now as I did back then (except I ean see my old teacher cringing at my poor intonation on violin).10A

Notes

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