The Power's Out

Album: Speed Of Darkness (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • Flogging Molly singer Dave King was raised in a small apartment in Beggars Bush, Dublin. He left Ireland in his twenties, briefly resided in London before moving to Los Angeles where he formed Flogging Molly. After marrying the band's fiddler Bridget Regan, he moved to Detroit where he wrote the majority of the band's fifth studio album Speed Of Darkness. This song was inspired by the different places he's lived. King explained to Alternative Press magazine: "I used Detroit as the epicenter for the song, but it's really to do with so many places, including Ireland. With the Irish people and the people of Detroit, there's a lot of humor. There's a lot of humor in that song if you really listen to it, a lot of sarcasm - 'I'm from Detroit, where my job is secure/Secure in the fact that it's gone for good.' When I was growing up in Ireland, 1975-76, it was the worst of times. It was pretty bad. But I always remember the people's sense of humor. We'd all sit around and individually sing a song. We had no money, but, we knew fun."
  • The song finds King singing about the savings being gone and the power's out. He told Alternative Press: "That was from my own experience as a child. We had no money. We had one room in the house - it was an [apartment]. We couldn't afford to pay the electricity bill. And the electricity would be turned off. And that happened a few times as a child. So I applied that to the current day."
  • King previously sung about the area where he grew up on the Swagger track, "The Ol' Beggars Bush."

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