Analysis Of Corb Lund's Song 'The Truth Comes Out'

Global warming is a major ecological concern today. It is being caused by man’s ever

increasing technological advances. With modern machinations taking over, nature is

being pushed out. Corb Lund’s song, “the truth comes out” off his album Hair in My

Eyes released by Stony Plain Records in 2005, illustrates for his listeners how man is

wreaking havoc on the earth and, ironically, causing his own suffering as a result.

The idea that we need to send ourselves a message, a warning, in essence, is

suggested in the chorus with smoke signals coming from a low burning fire. That the

truth “comes to light as only embers glow” (line 2) suggests the problems man has

created have been plaguing the earth for a very long time. The message is also

said

to be “lost but finally sent” (line 9).

The education is out there, we hear about global

warning on the news every day. We are asked to recycle and reuse and rethink, but

how many people are truly listening?

That global warming is one of the concerns expressed in this song is evident in the

lines “the weather’s been funny thirty years or so, / the winter’s got warm and not

as much snow” (lines 13 & 14). Indeed these are changes I have seen in my lifetime.

Having lived forty-eight years I can remember longer, colder winters than are seen

today. When I first moved to Fort McMurray in 1991, the winters chilled a man to

the bone. The minus forty-below lasted three weeks and stretched over a three-

month period. This type of weather has not been seen here in well over ten years.

Snow was always piled high on the banks, but not anymore.

The weather change as well as the increase of urbanization has had a major impact

on wild life. In his song, Corb Lund sings of the cougar and the grizzly. In the first

instance “Connie said she’s never seen the cougar so bold” (line 10). Why is that? An

animal that will avoid human contact at all costs is now making its way down to the

ranches and “stealing young colts” (line 11). Cord Lund answers that question in

his

song, “cuz there’s nowhere else to go” (line 12). He says the same for the Grizzly

when he warns the fishermen to watch out “when fishin’ on Lee’s Creek” (line 16)

for, like the cougar “there’s Grizzlies where there were no Grizzly bears before” (line

18). As we encroach upon their environment wildlife has little choice but to

encroach upon ours.

Corb Lund’s song, “the truth comes out” is both a warning and a plea to his listeners

to think about what mankind is doing to the planet. The hope is that the message is

not lost, not only sent, but heard. We must act now to avoid further destruction of

our planet, the lives of wildlife and, as a result, the destruction of our own

precarious existence upon the earth.