Lyric Analysis -
Hot House Ball

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OK, OK - after about 18 months of people mailing me with this one, I finally get round to writing this song up properly. Hot House Ball is, it seems, an ironic song about a Nuclear Power station, apparently not so far from Bruce’s home in Virginia. There is humour and sarcasm here, as we’ve previously heard in such songs as “Defenders of the Flag”. For example, children will be able to “glow in the dark” at Halloween without having to put on any special make-up.

In other words, this song places Bruce within the Matt Groening (“The Simpsons”) school of putting one in the eye of the more dishonest or sinister aspects of American government. It does not take such a huge leap of the imagination to visualise Homer Simpson himself at the control panel of this particular installment in Virginia.

Carwyn Fowler