Joe Harris

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Neil Young: Lookin' For a Leader
Posted on November 1, 2008, 10:32 AM in

This came out a couple of years ago, before the presidential campaign season had started and long before most of this country had ever heard of Barack Obama.

"Living With War" was the best Neil Young music in many, many years I thought. "Let's Impeach the President" and "The Restless Consumer" got most of the attention (great, scathing songs as well)... but these lyrics are spot on and eerie to consider Neil wrote them a year after Bush's re-election, this great pushback sort of floating around, growing but still leaderless.

I love this album. Huge, unfiltered and righteous rage. We're going to have accountability for what's been done to and by this nation's leadership over the past eight years. Truth will out.

'Lookin' for a Leader'
by Neil Young

Lookin' for a leader
To bring our country home
Re-unite the red white and blue
Before it turns to stone

Lookin' for somebody
Young enough to take it on
Clean up the corruption
And make the country strong

Walkin' among our people
There's someone who's straight and strong
To lead us from desolation
And a broken world gone wrong

Someone walks among us
And I hope he hears the call
And maybe it's a woman
Or a black man after all

Yeah maybe it's Obama
But he thinks that he's too young
Maybe it's Colin Powell
To right what he's done wrong

America has a leader
But he's not in the house
He's walking here among us
And we've got to seek him out

Yeah we've got our election
But corruption has a chance
We got to have a clean win
To regain confidence

America is beautiful
But she has an ugly side
We're lookin' for a leader
In this country far and wide
We're lookin' for a leader
With the great spirit on his side

Someone walks among us
And I hope he hears the call
And maybe it's a woman
Or a black man after all

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