Perpetual Ruminations

48 Hour Challenge; "The Final Countdown" by Europe

Just some ruminations on the song, "The Final Countdown" for the 48 Hour Challenge. Hmm, ruminations... a deep or considered thought and also the action of chewing the cud. Which is this? I'll let you decide.

Upon first watching the video, my thoughts went to the hair, typical of the big hair bands of the time. I also wondered what was up with all the head movement and bouncing up and down. Does this add to the song? Perhaps it helps to keep the rhythm or even to perform better on the drums and with the quality of the singing. Nope, I don't think so, just for show. I do know that as a young boy, watching a performance such as this would have resulted in hysterical laughter, but now it seems normal behavior for a band.

As for the song they sing, what does it mean? Well, they're leaving together, I assume the entire band. It's a farewell since they don't know if they will return to earth or not. They don't explain why they may not return, whether it's a one way trip, or maybe they just like it there more and don't want to come back. We don't know.

They go on to say that there is no one to blame, yet I tend to think it's their own blame how this will turn out, after all, it seems to be their choice to leave. Next they inform us their leaving ground, I assume it's for this journey they are taking, but then it could just be all the jumping. They do ask if things will ever be the same. Since time is fluid and continuously in motion, of course not.

They state in the next few lines that it is the final countdown. I take this to mean they are about to take off. Where? Well the song states Venus. I suppose they are thinking the mythical Venus populated with nothing but beautiful women. Unfortunately, what ever has them hopped up has them also out of bounds with reality. There are no women on Venus, and I doubt they will even survive the journey there. If they do, and if their craft survives landing, they are soon to parish when they open the hatch and the heat incinerates them even as the high atmospheric pressure crushes them.

They must have been hopped up in school not to have learned any of this, for they go on about standing tall in spite of the final countdown. They then add, "Cause maybe they've seen us and welcome us all, yeah." Who, as i pointed out, there are not any women on Venus. Well, that apparently is beside the point of this song as it goes on about so many light years to go. Venus? Definitely haven't study anything about where they are going.

They make this point even more clear in the next line about things to be found. I'm not sure they are going to find much of anything of interest on Venus. A scientist would, but not a bunch of hopped up hair heads who think Venus is light years away and populated with half naked, beautiful women.

The final line that actually expresses anything is, "I'm sure we'll all miss her so." They never explain who she is, but I'm guessing she's a groupie the entire band has become intimately acquainted with. I mean to miss her so, if you know what I mean. Of course, if they really believe Venus is full of beautiful, sex starved women, I doubt they really believe they will miss her at all. Probably just on the long journey. You know, they should have asked her, she likely would have joined the journey and likely would have fit right in.

After this it's just a repeat of the theme, "it's the final countdown." In fact it repeats over and over, which makes me wonder if there wasn't some malfunction and the clock never finished counting down but just continuously repeated the last ten seconds down to blast off, only to skip at two and start again at ten. Likely a scratch in the record. If someone had set a dime or a penny on the needle arm, it may have played through.

No matter, however, since they didn't finish the final countdown they never blasted off, although I'm sure they got plenty high. The result is the same, they stayed here on earth and wrote more catchy songs and avoided the disaster of traveling to Venus.

A bit of nonsense writing, I know, but the challenge was to write something, anything, on the song and video; that's what I did.