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Home > Music > Anthem

Anthem
by Harry Chapin

She wasn't very pretty,
She wasn't very smart,
But everything she said to him came strait from her heart.

Write a song about me,
Sing a song that's of my day,
Everybody special in there ordinary way.

CHORUS:
Looking for an anthem,
He was looking for a song,
Looking for a melody singing brings the world along.

He was strumming his guitar,
He was searching their eyes,
If he can't find his anthem will he buy the compromise.

One child was brown and hungry,
One a red injun girl,
One child was black and angry,
One from the other half the world.

And as he heard their silent screams,
That they have sounded there for years,
It had been lost among the whispers,
And drowned out by their tears.

CHORUS

He kept looking for a story,
Looking for a plot.
He kept on looking in the wonder,
If he was blind or not.

All he found was bugle fragments,
That he'd left there in his youth.
But he never found the music,
To accompany the truth.

Now the old man had been young once,
The old man had been strong.
He once had a family, but they'd grown up and moved a long.

The old man told him loneliness, is what the years would bring,
But the old man couldn't tell him,
How to make the long years sing.

CHORUS

 

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"Oh, if a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died what one man's life could be worth, I wonder what would happen to this world?" -- Harry Chapin, 1942-1981.

 

 


Harry's Music
Bottom Line Encore Collection
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Dance Band On The Titanic*
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Essentials
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Gold Medal Collection
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Greatest Stories Live*
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Harry Chapin Tribute
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Heads & Tales
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Last Protest Singer
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Legends Of Lost & Found*
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Living Room Suite
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On The Road To Kingdom Come
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Portrait Gallery
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Sequel
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Short Stories
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Sniper & Other Love Songs
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Story of a Life
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Verities & Balderdash
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* = Highly Recommended

The Latest Release

Sniper & Other Love Songs

 
[iTunes]

In 1972, Harry released Sniper & Other Love Songs. Thirty years would pass before the album would ever reach the CD format. Sniper was finally re-released in June, 2002.

Originally given a working title of Sweet City Suite, the album tells the story of various characters one might run into in a city. The album features the original studio versions of Chapin classics "A Better Place to Be" and "Circle." But perhaps more importantly (as those songs are already well-distributed on compilation CDs), the album features seemingly lost Chapin stories, including "And the Baby Never Cries," "Burning Herself," "Barefoot Boy," and "Woman Child."

Sniper is for the seasoned Chapin fan. New fans would do better to check out Greatest Stories Live. But for Chapin fans who have reached the level of the Dance Band on the Titanic album, this is the next step. Slightly over-produced and having a little of the "forced" feel that some of Harry's studio albums possess, this album does not capture the powerfully live Harry Chapin. Nonetheless, it captures Harry's great iconoclastic songwriting--Harry takes the story song to new heights here. But the album works best for those ready for it; don't buy it until you are ready to appreciate it!