Tuesday Tunes: Pacing The Cage.

A short series of shorter posts for Tuesdays in July, on songs I love with lyrics that never fail to make me smile.

Ah. “Pacing The Cage”. This ranks as one of my favourite songs ever. Bruce Cockburn is an excellent songwriter and lyricist, and an excellent guitarist (really amazing live, too). On this track he combines the two.

The picked guitar line is simple and straightforward (which isn’t to say I can play it worth anything, but there you go) and really quite beautiful. The lyric is poignant and powerful, one evocative image after the other, my favourite being:

I've proven who I am so many times,
the magnetic strip's worn thin.

I can enthusiastically recommend the album as a whole, but this song in particular is one of the ones that I can go to bed at night, turn out the light, grab the phones and listen to it over and over again.