Confessions of a Fanboy

	Guster - “Hang On”

“No one seems to know just who to follow anymore.”

It’s interesting line, that. It’s not always popular to espouse the idea that any of us should be following anyone or anything.

Let’s back up for a second. Here’s the opening couplet:

“Here we are inside a novel waiting for an end
but we don’t know the authors of the book.”

I like that metaphor. I think most of us can identify with it on some level. To some, we’re all wandering this life waiting to see what happens between Point A and the inevitable Point B. There are some of a certain belief system who will argue they know the author of the book, but they would probably identify with the idea that we are all a work in progress. Of course, I sometimes reach too much when I write about a song and get all carried away. It is possible to overthink these things. The chorus is simplicity itself:

“Hang on, hang on,
There’s a twilight, a nighttime, and a dawn,
Who knows how long, just hang on, hang on.”

This is is a life preserver being tossed to a drowning man. This is a song about hope and being connected to one another. Ganging Up on the Sun opens with the sleepy “Lightning Rod” and closes with the gospel of “Hang On.”

It’s a remarkable way to end a superlative record.

Filed under: Billboard Beatdown, Guster