This is a story about your friend and mine
(“Who is it, who is it, who is it?”)
There you stand with your L.A. tan
And your New York walk and your New York talk
Your mother left you when you were small
But you’re going to wish you wasn’t born at all
Steel and glass, steel and glass…
OK, so… John Lennon’s Steel and Glass. Not, strictly speaking, a Halloween song.
Except of course it is.
No but really, have you ever heard a song that feels like it’s staring straight through you?
Not judging you, not mocking you… just watching you. Coldly and silently. From somewhere inside the mirror.
That’s Steel and Glass, Lennon’s 1974 ghost story in skyscraper form.
I get it. There are no blood-slathered monsters lurching through the fog here. And yet, this thing is terrifying. It’s the sound of a man staring into the void of everything he used to be. A man who lived through fame, fortune, ego, and a musical vision that changed the world.
Except the reflection staring at him back looks nothing like himself.
The strings shriek, the bass pulses, and Lennon’s voice cuts through the reverb like a revenant climbing out of a fog made of regret. The whispers of a ghost still trudging through a life without humanity.
There’s something industrial and spectral about it. Steel and Glass are two lifeless, gleaming materials pressed together until they start echoing back commercial emptiness. A ghost light in a boardroom that never turns off.
The thing is some kind of spiritual autopsy, and Lennon makes us witnesses to all of it.
Steel and Glass is a song that plays to empty streets, reflections in windows staring you down, and a long starless night eyeing you in silent reproach. Draw the curtains if you want. The truth hangs in the air, waiting for you. Echoes of a prayer whispered to an industrial god.
Well, your mouthpiece squawks as he spreads your lies
But you can’t pull strings if your hands are tied
Well, your teeth are clean but your mind is capped
You leave your smell like an alley cat
Steel and glass, steel and glass…
