Album: Accident of Birth (1997)

Charted: 54

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• Journey back to the dark side, back into the womb
  Back to where the spirits move like vapor from the tomb
  The center of the cyclone, blowing out the sun
  Break the shackles of your union to the light
  
  I might've had a brother, a service board, they dragged him under
  To the other side of twilight, he's waiting for me now
  Not even tea was lost on me, I didn't ask, I couldn't see
  What created me, what and where and how?
  
  Welcome home, it's been too long, we've missed you
  Welcome home, we've opened up the gates
  Welcome home to your brothers and sisters
  Welcome home to an accident of birth
  
  Feel our bodies breathing as you try to stop believing
  There's nothing you can do about your shadows
  You can fight us, you are like us and your body will betray you
  Lay down and die like all the others
  
  Where are the angels and their wings of freedom?
  Jesus had His day off when they pulled you through
  
  Welcome home, it's been too long, we've missed you
  Welcome home, we've opened up the gates
  Welcome home to your brothers and sisters
  Welcome home to an accident of birth
  
  To an accident of birth
  
  Vision's growing dim as the daylight fades away
  I'm spinning, twisting, black, well, it's your dying day
  
  Welcome home, it's been too long, we've missed you
  Welcome home, we've opened up the gates
  Welcome home to your brothers and sisters
  Welcome home to an accident of birth
  
  Welcome home, it's been too long, we've missed you
  Welcome home, we've opened up the gates
  Welcome home to your brothers and sisters
  Welcome home to an accident of birth
  
  Writer/s: BRUCE DICKINSON, ROGER RAMIREZ
  Publisher: BMG Rights Management
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 2

• Dave from London, England"The songs Dickinson wrote for the album had a general "alchemy" theme (alchemy is the psuedo-science in which the practicers of alchemia attempted to make gold from other metals) "and specifically the poetry of William Blake, which is very much based on the philosophy of alchemy." Dickinson also said: "Each song has a sort of frame in which it operates. The first song is about fear, the second song is about tragedy, the third song is about union. You could pick a theme or a topic for each song so that's what the song is about and then you put it in a frame. For example, one of the songs is about failure and the song is called "The Trumpets of Jericho." In the story of the trumpets of Jericho in the Bible, the walls fall down when the tribes of Israel walk around the city and blow they trumpets. Except in this song they don't, it doesn't work. You're done everything right, everything's cool but the wall's still standing. And what do you do? How do you face up to that fact? And it's all part of the whole alchemy thing. What were the alchemists trying to do? They were trying to achieve something that was virtually impossible, they spent their whole lives trying to do it, and all of them failed, or pretty damn near all of them failed. So, what does that feel like, and how does that work, and why keep carrying on. So that's the way the songs kind of work. And you don't have to go into them in all this detail, you could just sit back there and let it hit you over the head like a sledgehammer cause the album works it's just a really heavy album. But it's all there if you want to dig through the words.""
  
  Hate to be pedantic but all the above refers, surely, to the 1998 album "The Chemical Wedding" whereas "Accident Of Birth" was from the 1997 album, also titled "Accident Of Birth"
  
  
• Matt from Toronto, CanadaAccident of birth is a line from Jethro Tull's song "Wind Up" off the album Aqualung:
  "How d'ya dare to tell me that I'm my father's son, when that was just an accident of birth"
  The song, along with half the album, is about how organized religion is pointless, and how it exploits peoples' beliefs.

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