For My Sunday Song #459, we are going to discuss the epic White Lion song “Lights and Thunder”. The song was the first single off their fourth album ‘Mane Attraction’ and the song came out in March 1991. It was an unusual song for a single due to its length at over 8 minutes long. By far, their longest song up to this point in time. That would change in 2008 when they released “Sangre de Cristo” from their album ‘Return of the Pride’. “Lights and Thunder” actually charted in the UK at #95, it charted, I didn’t say it charted very high.

The song was written by Mike Tramp and Vitto Bratta and talks about a Utopian society where there is no fighting, no religion, no kings and only peace, love and happiness. Yep, a make believe world that will never exist. It was a statement that the world is really fucked up (imagine if that was written today as it is more so now) and there is too much fighting, too many wars and simply too much.

Musically is where this song is so badass. It was inspired greatly by Led Zeppelin’s “Achilles Last Stand” and is full of very complex moments, tempo changes and full on rock epicness. This was the opening track of the album and what a way to kick things off. It starts off with some weird keyboard sounds, some drum fills echoing in from all sides and a little Vitto guitar solo…totally wicked. The song explodes in to full band mode, the drums are heavy as hell and the barrage of snare hits is crazy almost like machine gun fire. Mike Tramp sings with an almost angelic-like vocal delivery welcoming you to the utopian world. He goes all gritty during the chorus. Before one of the instrumental breaks, there is a lot of spoken words from various leaders around the world including Martin Luther King, George Bush, and many others all letting us know how bad things are down here.

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