Grace Under Pressure

• Released April 12, 1984 by Mercury Records
• Went Platinum (1,000,000 copies) on June 26, 1984
• Purchase This Album

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1. Distant Early Warning (4:56)
2. Afterimage (5:03)
3. Red Sector A (5:09)
4. The Enemy Within (Part I Of Fear) (4:34)
5. The Body Electric (4:59)
6. Kid Gloves (4:17)
7. Red Lenses (4:41)
8. Between The Wheels (5:44)

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Lyrics

• Distant Early Warning (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  An ill wind comes arising
  Across the cities of the plain
  There's no swimming in the heavy water --
  No singing in the acid rain
  Red alert
  Red alert
  
  It's so hard to stay together
  Passing through revolving doors
  We need someone to talk to
  And someone to sweep the floors --
  Incomplete
  Incomplete
  
  The world weighs on my shoulders
  But what am I to do?
  You sometimes drive me crazy --
  But I worry about you
  
  I know it makes on difference
  To what you're going through
  But I see the tip of the iceberg --
  And I worry about you...
  
  Cruising under your radar
  Watching from satellites
  Take a page from the red book --
  Keep them in your sights
  Red alert
  Red alert
  
  Left and rights of passage
  Black and whites of youth
  Who can face the knowledge
  That the truth is not the truth?
  Obsolete
  Absolute
  
  The world weighs on my shoulders
  But what am I to do?
  You sometimes drive me crazy --
  But I worry about you
  
  I know it makes on difference
  To what you're going through
  But I see the tip of the iceberg --
  And I worry about you...
  
  Absalom, Absalom, Absalom
  
  
• Afterimage (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  Suddenly --
  You were gone
  From all the lives
  You left your mark upon
  
  I remember --
  How we talked and drank
  Into the misty dawn
  -- I hear the voices
  
  We ran by the water
  On the wet summer lawn
  -- I see the foot prints
  I remember --
  
  -- I feel the way you would
  -- I feel the way you would
  
  Tried to believe
  But you know it's no good
  This is something
  That just can't be understood
  
  I remember --
  The shouts of joy
  Skiing fast through the woods
  -- I hear the echoes
  
  I learned your love for life
  I feel the way that you would
  -- I feel your presence
  I remember --
  
  I feel the way you would
  This just can't be understood...
  
  
• Red Sector A (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  All that we can do is just survive
  All that we can do to help ourselves is stay alive...
  
  Ragged lines of ragged grey
  Skeletons, they shuffle away
  Shouting guards and smoking guns
  Will cut down the unlucky ones
  
  I clutch the wire fence until my fingers bleed
  A wound that will not heal -- a heart that cannot feel --
  Hoping that the horror will recede
  Hoping that tomorrow, we'll all be freed
  
  Sickness to insanity
  Prayer to profanity
  Days and weeks and months go by
  Don't feel the hunger -- too weak to cry
  
  I hear the sound of gunfire at the prison gate
  Are the liberators here -- do I hope or do I fear?
  For my father and my brother, it's too late
  But I must help my mother stand up straight...
  
  Are we the last ones left alive?
  Are we the only human beings to survive?...
  
  
• The Enemy Within (PART I OF THE "FEAR" TRILOGY) (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  Things crawl in the darkness
  That imagination spins
  Needles at your nerve ends
  Crawl like spiders on your skin
  
  Pounding in your temples
  And a surge of adrenaline
  Every muscle tense -- to fence the enemy within
  
  I'm not giving in to security under pressure
  I'm not missing out on the promise of adventure
  I'm not giving up on implausible dreams
  Experience to extremes --
  Experience to extremes
  
  Suspicious-looking stranger
  Flashes you a dangerous grin
  Shadows across your window --
  Was it only trees in the wind?
  
  Every breath a static charge --
  A tongue that tastes like tin
  Steely-eyed outside to hide the enemy within...
  
  To you -- is it movement or is it action?
  It is contact or just reaction?
  And you -- revolution or just resistance?
  Is it living, or just existence?
  Yeah, you -- it takes a little more persistence
  To get up and go the distance...
  
  
• The Body Electric (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  One humanoid escapee
  One android on the run
  Seeking freedom beneath a lonely desert sun
  
  Trying to change its program
  Trying to change the mode -- crack the code
  Images conflicting into data overload
  
  1-0-0-1-0-0-1
  S.O.S
  1-0-0-1-0-0-1
  In distress
  1-0-0-1-0-0
  
  Memory banks unloading
  Bytes break into bits
  Unit One's in trouble and it's scared out of its wits
  
  Guidance systems break down
  A struggle to exist -- to resist
  A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist...
  
  1-0-0-1-0-0-1
  S.O.S
  1-0-0-1-0-0-1
  In distress
  1-0-0-1-0-0
  
  It replays each of the days
  A hundred years of routines
  Bows its head and prays
  To the mother of all machines...
  
  
• Kid Gloves (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  A world of difference
  A world so out of touch
  Overwhelmed by everything
  But wanting more so much --
  
  Call it blind frustration
  Call it blind man's bluff
  Call each other names --
  Your voices rude -- your voices rough
  Then you learn the lesson
  That it's cool to be so tough
  
  Handle with kid gloves
  Handle with kid gloves
  Then you learn the lessons
  Taught in school won't be enough
  Put on your kid gloves
  Put on your kid gloves
  Then you learn the lesson
  That it's cool to be so tough
  
  A world of indifference
  Heads and hearts too full
  Careless of the consequence
  Of constant push and pull
  
  Anger got bare knuckles
  Anger play the fool
  Anger wear a crown of thorns
  Reverse the golden rule
  Then you learn the lesson
  That it's tough to be so cool
  
  Handle with kid gloves
  Handle with kid gloves
  Then you learn the weapons
  And the ways of hard-knock school
  Put on your kid gloves
  Put on your kid gloves
  Then you learn the lesson
  That it's tough to be so cool
  
  
• Red Lenses (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  i see red
  it hurts my head
  guess it must be something
  that i read
  
  it's the colour of your heartbeat
  a rising summer sun
  the battle lost -- or won
  the flash to fashion
  and the pulse to passion --
  feels red
  inside my head
  and truth is often bitter --
  left unsaid
  said red red
  thinking about the overhead --
  the underfed
  -- couldn't we talk about something else instead?
  
  we've got mars on the horizon
  says the national midnight star
  (it's true)
  what you believe is what you are
  a pair of dancing shoes --
  the soviets are the blues --
  the reds
  under your bed
  lying --
  in the darkness
  dead ahead
  
  and the mercury is rising
  barometer starts to fall
  you know it gets to us all
  the pain that is learning
  and the rain that is burning --
  feel red
  still -- go ahead
  you see black and white --
  and i see red
  (not blue)
  
  
• Between The Wheels (Lee, Lifeson, Peart)
  
  To live between a rock and a hard place
  In between time --
  Cruising in prime time -- soaking up the cathode rays
  
  To live between the wars in our time --
  Living in real time --
  Holding the good time -- Holding on to yesterdays...
  
  You know how that rabbit feels
  Going under your speeding wheels
  Bright images flashing by
  Like windshields towards a fly
  Frozen in the fatal climb -- but the wheels of time --
  Just pass you by...
  
  Wheels can take you around
  Wheels can cut you down
  
  We can go from boom to bust
  From dreams to a bowl of dust
  We can fall from rockets' red glare
  Down to "Brother can you spare --"
  Another war -- another waste land --
  And another lost generation...
  
  It slips between your hands like water
  This living in real time
  A dizzying lifetime
  Reeling by on celluloid
  
  Struck between the eyes
  By the big-time world
  Walking uneasy streets --
  Hiding beneath the sheets --
  Got to try and fill the void...