"Alive With The Glory Of Love," Say Anything

Song: "Alive With The Glory Of Love"
Album: Say Anything Is A Real Boy
Artist: Say Anything

The Man learned long ago how to ruin a good rock & roll song... put it on TV. But, Scrubs makes me laugh and there's no denying the power of a good forbidden love story.

I love this song on so many levels...

First the lyrics. It tells a story from the perspective of a rebel on the loosing side of a war. Max Bemis the song writer and singer had grandparents who were in fact Holocaust survivors, which I learned about by reading the Wiki article. On closer read, the lyrics reference Treblinka, a German concentration camp in Poland where his grandparents survived.

"Now Treblinkah is alive with the glory of love"

And that is the the ultimate triumph of his grandparents and of the song-- love wins.

For me, the song transcends the cultural and generational differences between the 1940's WWII era and today. After all, love is universal no matter the circumstance, no matter the time. If his grandparents' love can survive Treblinka, any love can survive anything.

The music is also special; loud, fast and angry with punk and hardcore while the singer is describing the axis powers, tender, slower and airier (good jumpy rock) while describing his lover.

This song is very well made; war on one side, love on the other. What higher purpose could there be for a song than to express an unstoppable passion overcoming the violence and inanity of war? It goes so far (in the last stanza) to reveal that the love is so strong, it would survive the singer's death.

"Should they kill me, your love will fill me as warm as the bullets, yeah.
I'll know my purpose: this war was worth this. I won't let you down…"

Hopeful and fiercely defiant under the worst of circumstances, can you imagine a love so strong that fighting World War II, being imprisoned and dying were all worth it? It puts true love in perspective and in it's proper place, diminishing war and it's physical world trappings to an obstacle. No matter how daunting the obstacle it's still just that, an obstacle. Love, on the other hand, is the very purpose for living.