Moving Pictures (album) - Songs

Songs

One of Rush's best-known songs, "Tom Sawyer", is a mainstay in Rush's live shows. Lyrics for this track were written in collaboration with Max Webster lyricist Pye Dubois.

The second song on Moving Pictures is "Red Barchetta". The lyrics were inspired by the short story A Nice Morning Drive by Richard S. Foster. Instead of the MGB roadster in the story, Peart has reported that the car that inspired the song's title is a Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta.

Next is the Grammy-nominated instrumental "YYZ". The track's title is the IATA Airport Code for Toronto Pearson International Airport. It is played repeatedly in Morse code (-.--/-.--/--..) at the beginning of the song using a 5/4 time signature, where the dashes (-) are played using eighth notes and the dots (.) utilize sixteenth notes.

"Limelight" is another perennial radio favourite. The lyrics are autobiographical, based on Peart's own dissatisfaction with fame and its intrusion into personal life. The song contains two self-references: the first, the line "living in a fish-eye lens, caught in the camera eye" references the next track, "The Camera Eye", while the line "all the world's indeed a stage, and we are merely players," references their live album All the World's a Stage (as well as the famous line by William Shakespeare).

Side two of the original vinyl release opened with "The Camera Eye", to date Rush's final song lasting longer than ten minutes, once a common length surpassed in their recorded output. Lyrically and musically it is an attempt to capture the energy and moods of two of the English-speaking world's great cities: New York City (first verse) and London (second verse). Unlike all the other songs on the album, it had not been performed live since the Signals tour of 1983 until it was brought back for the band's Time Machine Tour along with the rest of Moving Pictures in its entirety. The title refers to short pieces of the same name in the U.S.A. trilogy of John Dos Passos. Neil Peart has stated that he is an admirer of Dos Passos' work.

The sixth song, "Witch Hunt", features voices during the intro (that according to Alex Lifeson on In the Studio with Redbeard, which devoted an episode to Moving Pictures, were recorded outside Le Studio in sub-zero temperatures with the band and crew ranting and raving in a humorous way) and sound effects made by Lee's Oberheim keyboards, before jumping into the rock section of the song. It features graphic designer and musician Hugh Syme on keyboards (Rush's longtime artwork creator), and the entire drum part was recorded twice in one verse, with a percussion section created by recording each sound differently. "Witch Hunt" would become a part of the Fear series of songs, which includes "The Weapon" from Signals, "The Enemy Within" from Grace Under Pressure, and "Freeze" from Vapor Trails.

The last track on the album is "Vital Signs", which starts off with a distinctive sequencer part made by Lee's OB-X synthesizer, showing distinct reggae flavour. Reggae influences began on Rush's previous album Permanent Waves and would later creep into tracks found on the band's next studio releases, Signals and Grace Under Pressure