Hello there lovely SOUP readers, and I'm back here again to talk about a song with you! Despite there being so many songs relating to the cosmos, I struggled this month. I wanted a meaningful song that would be nice to go over the lyrics for, and potentially have a confirmed meaning. I eventually found this in 'The Greatest Show on Earth' by Nightwish, released in 2015 as a part of the album 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful'. The song is heavily inspired by evolutionary biology, and includes quotes from a book with the same title. The Greatest Show on Earth (Book) was written by Richard Dawkins.
The overall topic of this song is the development of life on Earth as well as evolution. It's a 24 minute song, split up into several different movements. The 1st movement is Four Point Six, the 2nd movement is Life, the 3rd movement is The Toolmaker, the 4th movement is The Understanding, and the last movement is Sea Worn Driftwood. I'll go over each movement separately, since they're all very different from one another and could practically be their own song.
1. Four Point Six
4.6 refers to the assumed formation time of our planet, the Earth. We start off with 3 minutes of just instrumental music, when slowly a humming voice comes in that turns into singing about the Archaean Horizon, intended to mean the first era on earth (which would officially be Hadean Eon). Then we hear the first quote of the book be narrated by writer Dawkins.
2. Life
Life is about how the universe and evolution work. It starts off by talking about how the planets orbit the sun, and how cold it is out in space. We move on to the Goldilocks zone, things growing from something small into more, and LUCA - the first organism. There was a writing left behind that serves as evidence for the beginnings of the Universe, Earth, and Life, of which the Greeks speculated that is similar to the Big Bang theory.
3. The Toolmaker
In The Toolmaker, we move on to human life. We're known and characterized by tools that we create, use, adjust, and throw away, and this is something our survival depends on. The Toolmaker is about the evolutions of humanity, starting from the earliest known events and what is suspected to be the end of it, too.
4. The Understanding
The Understanding exists of a piece directly taken from Richard Dawkins' book, narrated . It's a spoken piece, once again done by the writer of the book, Richard Dawkins. It speaks about how many of us are privileged, yet we complain. Despite there being people who will never have the same opportunities that we do.
5. Sea-Worn Driftwood
Sea-Worn Driftwood is a mostly instrumental piece, with the exception of one quote being taken from Charles Darwin's book 'On the Origin of Species'. We then move onto hearing ocean noises, and then silence.
Thank you for hearing me out about 'The Greatest Show on Earth'. I hope you'll come back to see me discover the meaning of yet another song next month, about a new topic! This was your favourite Fox.
-Fox