Here’s the latest project from the Bruuuce.com community – we’re putting together a deep study of Bruce Hornsby’s lyrical work across all of his studio albums, from The Way It Is until Deep Sea Vents!
Just the words – the narratives, themes, imagery, motifs and patterns across almost 40 years.
We’ll do that in four stages:
- Agree a list of themes
- Fit each song to a theme (or 2, or 3)
- Identify imagery used across Bruce’s songs
- Look for patterns across almost 40 years of Bruce’s songwriting!
We’re starting by gathering a collection of themes (no more than 12) that cover over 150 songs(!)
We’ll create a preliminary list – a quick definition of each theme. We’ll classify each song into at least one theme, to help further define them. It’s all open to discussion, and this is one person’s take for now – go easy! Let us know what you think. We’re still writing (and re-writing) it.
Important to note that almost every song will fit 2 or more categories, rather than fit neatly into one theme.
This is just the beginning… after we’re agreed on where each song fits, we start to look for patterns! And then we walk about imagery!
To review each song, we’ve consulted the Bruuuce.com wiki, which contains a detailed interpretation of the lyrics of each song in Bruce’s catalog.
It’s also being discussed on our Bruuuce.com Facebook group.