Starlight - Muse

Starlight Lyrics by Muse

               Seeing as a good number of folks chose to write their blog on song lyrics I thought I’d do the same. The song I chose is Starlight by Muse. It’s one of my favorite songs of theirs and has a special meaning for me. I have always enjoyed Muse, but when I saw this song on my husband’s playlist entitled “Being at sea sucks” I suddenly heard it very differently. A quick little backstory: I met my husband when he was in the US Navy stationed on board the destroyer DDG-102, USS Sampson. Random fun fact: the USS Sampson was featured in and used to film the movie Battleship while participating in RIMPAC 2010 in Hawaii.

So back to the main topic. I had previously taken the song lyrics figuratively, but now I see them in a much more literal sense. And taken literally, this song makes the argument that my husband so simply stated, that being at sea sucks. It’s important for me to state that though there may be others, this is my interpretation of the song.

The first stanza sets the scene, a ship is leaving for a destination “far away”, somewhere that takes the singer away from “the people who care if I live or die”. This last line in the stanza is of particular importance when taken from the perspective of a member of the armed forces. You are leaving the people who would care very much if you were to not come back, which is always a distinct possibility.

The second stanza follows to make a statement about chasing “starlight” for the rest of the singer’s life and feeling as though it may not be worth it in the end. Being deployed, whether onboard ship or boots on ground, can be both dangerous and tedious at the same time. The “starlight” is the end of the deployment, the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. Though ten months may not sound like a long time, it certainly feels it. And again, there is the lingering possibility of not returning from deployment.

The next three stanzas go on to iterate the feeling of loneliness and longing a person feels when being separated from loved ones. I would assume here that everyone can relate to this feeling in some way or another. Maybe it’s just being homesick when you were at summer camp as a child. Maybe it’s what makes it so hard to leave at the end of a fun date. Or maybe it’s what we feel after losing someone close to us. When there is a person who electrifies your life, especially in the romantic sense, you want to keep them close and never let them go. The fact that the third stanza is repeated three times throughout the song is important because this is a feeling that is so universal.

The fourth stanza contains an interesting line “all the souls that would die just to feel alive”. Though it may sound morbid and even confusing out of context, to me it is the point in the song where the singer recognizes that this feeling of longing for a loved one, though bittersweet, is something that people want to feel because it makes them feel alive.

The fifth and sixth stanzas signify the dilemma of whether absence makes the heart grow fonder or leads it to wander. Being separated over a deployment, often with limited communication, tests even the strongest relationships. I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve heard of the infidelity of spouses while they or their loved ones are on deployment. It is a persistent fear that many of my military friends and family have expressed. When this does occur their “hopes and expectations” for the relationship are dashed away by the “revelations” that infidelity brings to a relationship.

The themes of this song can certainly be applied to a general audience but is even more poignant to someone who literally must sail “far away”. Listen to the song again while imagining yourself on deck, leaving port as you wave goodbye to your family and friends on shore, perhaps for the last time.