Can Anybody Hear Me – Song Description
“We heard you. With love.” The fifty years are the real subject of this song, more than the answer that eventually arrives at the end of it. Most songs built around this kind of longing skip fairly quickly to the reply, because the reply is the satisfying part, the part that resolves the tension. This one makes you sit inside the not-hearing for the whole length of a working life first — an old man sending the same signal out into the dark, night after night, decade after decade, with no evidence whatsoever that anyone is receiving it. I wanted that long, unrewarded stretch to matter as much as the ending, because I think it’s the only thing that gives the eventual answer its real weight. Without the fifty years of silence behind it, “we heard you, with love” would just be a nice line. With them behind it, it becomes the most straightforwardly hopeful moment in this whole section, and I felt I genuinely needed one, after so many of these songs stay in the asking.
Can Anybody Hear Me
Verse 1
Midnight on the hillside
The city far below
Just an old man and a radio
Where the cold night breezes blow
The world says he’s a dreamer
A fool who’s gone too far
But every night he turns the dial
And speaks toward the stars
Chorus
Can anybody hear me?
Out beyond the night
Past the silent planets
Past the last faint light
Can anybody hear me?
Across eternity
I’m only one small voice
In an endless galaxy
Verse 2
Fifty years of silence
Fifty years alone
Listening for a distant voice
On frequencies unknown
The seasons came and left him
The years slipped quietly by
Yet still he climbed that lonely hill
Beneath the ancient sky
Chorus
Can anybody hear me?
Out beyond the night
Past the silent planets
Past the last faint light
Can anybody hear me?
Across eternity
I’m only one small voice
In an endless galaxy
Bridge
Then one night the static faltered
The noise began to fade
A strange and gentle signal
Through the emptiness was made
No warning and no mystery
No secrets from above
Just five simple words arriving:
“We heard you.
With love.”
Final Chorus
Can anybody hear me?
Out beyond the night
Past the silent planets
Past the last faint light
Can anybody hear me?
Across eternity
I’m only one small voice
In an endless galaxy
But somewhere in the darkness
Beyond what eyes can see
Someone heard my calling
Across eternity
Outro
Midnight on the hillside
The city far below
An old man smiled beside his radio
And watched the starlight glow.
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty