Rush - Grace Under Pressure Album Lyrics

An ill wind comes arising
Across the cities of the plain
There's no swimming in the heavy water
No singing in the acid rain
Red alert
Red alert
It's so hard to stay together
Passing through revolving doors
We need someone to talk to
And someone to sweep the floors
Incomplete
Incomplete
Chorus
The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy
But I worry about you
I know it makes no difference
To what you're going through
But I see the tip of the iceberg
And I worry about you...
Cruising under your radar
Watching from satellites
Take a page from the red book
Keep them in your sights
Red alert
Red alert
Left and rights of passage
Black and whites of youth
Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?
Obsolete
Absolute
Chorus
Absalom, Absalom, Absalom

Suddenly, you were gone
From all the lives you left your mark upon
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 footprints
I remember
I feel the way you would
I feel the way you would
Tried to believe but you know it's no good
This is something that just can't be understood
I remember
The shouts of joy skiing fast through the woods
I hear the echoes
I learned your love for life,
I feel the way that you would
I feel your presence
I remember
I feel the way you would
This just can't be understood...

All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves is stay alive
Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones
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
Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger
Too weak to cry
I hear the sound of gunfire at the prison gate
Are the liberators here?
Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother, it's too late
But I must help my mother stand up straight
Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings to survive?

Things crawl in the darkness
That imagination spins
Needles at your nerve ends
Crawl like spiders on your skin
Pounding in your temples
And a surge of adrenaline
Every muscle tense to fence the enemy within
I'm not giving in to security under pressure
I'm not missing out on the promise of adventure
I'm not giving up on implausible dreams
Experience to extremes
Experience to extremes...
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
To you, is it movement or is it action?
Is it contact or just reaction?
And you...revolution or just resistance?
Is it living, or just existence?
Yeah, you! It takes a little more persistence
To get up and go the distance
Chorus

One humanoid escapee
One android on the run
Seeking freedom beneath a lonely desert sun
Trying to change its program
Trying to change the mode -- crack the code
Images conflicting into data overload
Chorus
1-0-0-1-0-0-1
SOS
1-0-0-1-0-0-1
In distress
1-0-0-1-0-0
Memory banks unloading
Bytes break into bits
Unit One's in trouble and it's scared out of its wits
Guidance systems break down
A struggle to exist
To resist
A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist
Chorus
It replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays
To the mother of all machines

A world of difference
A world so out of touch
Overwhelmed by everything
But wanting more so much
Call it blind frustration
Call it blind man's bluff
Call each other names
Your voices rude,
Your voices rough
Then you learn the lesson
That it's cool to be so tough
Handle with kid gloves
Handle with kid gloves
Then you learn the lessons
Taught in school won't be enough
Put on your kid gloves
Put on your kid gloves
Then you learn the lesson
That it's cool to be so tough
A world of indifference
Heads and hearts too full
Careless of the consequence
Of constant push and pull
Anger got bare knuckles
Anger play the fool
Anger wear a crown of thorns
Reverse the golden rule
Then you learn the lesson
That it's tough to be so cool
Handle with kid gloves
Handle with kid gloves
Then you learn the weapons
And the ways of hard-knock school
Put on your kid gloves
Put on your kid gloves
Then you learn the lesson
That it's tough to be so cool

i see red
and it hurts my head
guess it must be something
that i read
it's the color of your heartbeat
a rising summer sun
the battle lost or won
the flash to fashion
and the pulse to passion
feels red
inside my head
and truth is often bitter
left unsaid
said red red
thinking about the overhead
the underfed
couldn't we talk about something else instead?
we've got mars on the horizon
says the national midnight star
(it's true)
what you believe is what you are
a pair of dancing shoes
the soviets are the blues
the reds
under your bed
lying in the darkness
dead ahead
and the mercury is rising
barometer starts to fall
you know it gets to us all
the pain that is learning
and the rain that is burning
feel red
still...go ahead
you see black and white
and i see red
red
(not blue)

To live between a rock and a hard place
In between time
Cruising in prime time
Soaking up the cathode rays
To live between the wars in our time
Living in real time
Holding the good time
Holding on to yesterdays
Chorus
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
Wheels can take you around
Wheels can cut you down
We can go from boom to bust
From dreams to a bowl of dust
We can fall from rockets' red glare
Down to "Brother can you spare..."
Another war
Another wasteland
And another lost generation
It slips between your hands like water
This living in real time
A dizzying lifetime
Reeling by on celluloid
Struck between the eyes
By the big-time world
Walking uneasy streets
Hiding beneath the sheets
Got to try and fill the void
Chorus