There is a song written for dreamers, who have been left broken hearted by the world, and that is Michael Nesmith’s heart wrenching Hollywood. in every word one can feel the despair of someone with a lost faith in dreams.
Michael has a way of writing a song about something so many of us feel, but normally no one writes a song about it, But Michael never let conventional song writing limit his fertile mind. The broken hearted have plenty of songs to turn to, when love has left them, but what about the dreamers with lost dreams, who feel defeated and like everything they want the most is never going to happen? There are few songs for those of us struggling with such feelings.
But Michael Nemith’s gorgeous song is one for us, the defeated Dreamer can seek refuge in his song, they feel his pain as he has to leave the cruel Hollywood that promised to make all of his dreams come true, but instead destroyed his world and left him to start a new, the try to learn how to dream again.
This song I believe is based on Michael’s experience when the Monkees were fallen apart, this song is about his personal feeling and struggle to start again once the life he had made for himself was suddenly over. A song about looking back at a past of your life that you found so exciting, thinking your deepest dreams were coming true, uplifting you to a state of absolute heaven, only to fall back down to earth, with your heart fallen apart and your dreams striped away from you.
There is something consoling about hearing someone express what we are feeling, it is as though we are hearing someone say I feel that way too, and I get it, which is sometimes exactly what we need to hear when we are down, that someone knows and understands why we are sad, and that it’s real, what we are feeling.
Perhaps that is why we find such solace in these songs and the company of the artists who made them, To hear Michael sing of his pain, and devasting struggle to carry on, help us not to feel alone, in our own struggles and to think maybe just like him we should aspire to dream again…
Lyrics to “Hollywood” By Michael Nesmith
- Verse 1
- It’s Not The Country-Side That Appealed To My Heart,
- It’s The Spirit And It Captured My Mind
- But The Things I Tried To Be Made A Wreck Out Of Me,
- Now A Different Road I Must Find
- Verse 2
- The Sun That’s Falling From The Southwestern Sky,
- Tells Me That I Must Depart
- So By Sundown Today,
- I’ll Be On My Way
- But I’ll Be Leaving My Heart
- Chorus:
- These Things I Think Are New,
- I Guess They’re Really Old
- It Seems I’ve Done Them Once Before!
- Now To Go Back To That Fork In The Road,
- Takes All The Strength Of My Soul And More
- (music)
- Oh, Good-bye, Good-bye You Cruel Town,
- You’ve Been A Fair-Weather Friend
- Now I Will Go To Someplaces That I Know,
- Where Things Don’t Start Just To End
- Chorus:
- These Things I Think Are New,
- I Guess They’re Really Old
- It Seems I’ve Done Them Once Before!
- Now To Go Back To That Fork In The Road,
- Takes All The Strength Of My Soul And More
- (music)
- Oh, Good-bye, Good-bye You Cruel Town,
- You’ve Been A Fair-Weather Friend
- Now I Will Go To Someplaces That I Know,
- Where Things Don’t Start Just To End
- (music) Fade
Whatever the emotion he is trying to convey Michael can always make you feel what he is feeling, it is done quietly and sometimes the words you know he’s saying are unspoken, and the words you do hear in his song are put together with such care and devoted Passion, there is Love in all of his music.
Michael always has a humbleness to his genius, and such a clear mind to see the simplicity of the complexity of life.“Some ways of using our thinking are really inspiring. There are people who use their thinking to race cars. People use their thinking to build rockets to the moon. It’s all just a use of your thinking.”-Mike Nesmith
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