Generals – Song Description
“The bravest hearts are seldom loud. They simply do their best.” The people this song is actually praising, in the end, are never named, in much the same way the people in “The Warmth Was Real” are never named either, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence appearing twice by accident across this collection. Songs that try to honour quiet decency keep having to invent that quietness fresh in the writing itself, because the people who actually lived it, who simply did what seemed right without needing an audience to witness or applaud the doing of it, never thought to record themselves doing it in the first place. I wrote this one with the last few years very much in mind, more than any distant historical period, thinking about the particular kind of person who quietly appointed themselves a moral authority during a season of collective fear, set against the much less visible, much less rewarded decency of everyone who simply got on with doing the right thing anyway, without once needing anyone to notice them doing it.
(Slow • Reflective • 4/4)
Verse 1
No medals on their jackets
No ribbons on display
Just ordinary neighbours
With so much left to say
Pointing down the pavement
Drawing lines in sand
Certain they were helping
With an outstretched hand
Chorus
Some became the generals
When fear began to reign
Speaking with such certainty
While others bore the pain
Convinced they held the answers
Certain they were right
Never seeing what they’d done
In the cold daylight
Verse 2
They filled the air with rumours
They filled the world with fear
The louder that they shouted
The harder truth could hear
They stood behind their certainty
They never stepped aside
Never stopped to question
The growing human tide
Chorus
Some became the generals
When fear began to reign
Speaking with such certainty
While others bore the pain
Convinced they held the answers
Certain they were right
Never seeing what they’d done
In the cold daylight
Verse 3
No badges of authority
No uniforms to wear
Just voices growing louder
Until they filled the air
They measured every stranger
By rules they’d never known
Forgetting every heartbeat
Behind each flesh and bone
Bridge
History keeps its secrets
Time writes another page
Yesterday’s convictions
Can quickly show their age
The loudest voices fade away
The echoes slowly die
Only deeds are left behind…
Beneath an open sky
Final Chorus
Some became the generals
When fear began to reign
Speaking with such certainty
While others bore the pain
No medals on their jackets
No heroes carved in stone
Only quiet memories…
Of lessons still unknown
Outro
Put away the uniforms
Let every judgement rest
The bravest hearts are seldom loud…
They simply do their best
Vocals Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty