Michael Baginski Listening In, Today Third

LISTENING IN: America through the looking glass, Styx’s prescient classic

Dennis DeYoung called it the Styx song that the record company “missed.” The Chicago band’s ultimate masterpiece, “Suite Madame Blue,” anchored the 1975 album Equinox, challenging and encouraging a “changed” America to “lift up your heart and make a new start” to be a mature and worthy world leader once again.

This stunning live performance took place in 2002 after lead singer (and song lyricist) DeYoung (photo) – one of rock’s all-time great vocalists – had split from the band (to be replaced by Canadian Lawrence Gowan). Unlike like the original, it is uniquely augmented by a full orchestra, which perfectly plays to the song’s underlying reflectiveness, before giving way to the emphatic call-to-action finale (not unlike “Stairway to Heaven”) that issues a hopeful plea: “Come lead us away from here!”

Given recent events, It’s sentiment that seems even more relevant – and needed – today, even if, as DeYoung mused almost 50 years ago, “You’re so far away.”

Lyrics

Time after time
I sit and I wait for your call
I know I’m a fool
But what can I say?
Whatever the price I’ll pay
For you, Madame Blue

Once long ago
A word from your lips and the world turned around
But somehow you’ve changed
You’re so far away
I long for the past and dream of the days
With you, Madame Blue

Suite Madame Blue
Gaze in your looking-glass
You’re not a child anymore
Suite Madame Blue
The future is all but past
Dressed in your jewels, you made your own rules
You conquered the world and more
Heaven’s door

America, America, America, America
America, America, America, America
America, America, America, America

Red white and blue
Gaze in your looking-glass
You’re not a child anymore
Red, white, and blue
The future is all but past
So lift up your heart
Make a new start
And lead us away from here

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