DEAD MAN

Sailing on my every step.
Inching off of the earth.
Is magnified by the things I've done.
The thing that I've become.

Every lift of my hand.
Coffee cup and back.
Is magnified by the things I've done.
The things I've seen.
The things I've caused.

I'm a dead man walking.

The hammer that I once brought down now hovers over me.
Casts a shadow... across, onto me.

The hallways are all mocking me.
What I've become they're all mocking me.

I'm a dead man walking.
A dead man walking.
A dead man walking.
I'm a dead man walking.
Dead man walking.
Dead man walking.

This tune is gripping in its stark simplicity. As is so often the case in Eddie’s most emotionally charged songs, he captures a moment in time, a snapshot, the period of reflection just before the inmate walks to his execution.

The insistent low pulse of the repeated chord root, (thanks to the drop D tuning) aided by bowed bass flourishes feels like the heartbeat of the condemned man. Powerful, insistent, soon to cease. The melody is organized around a flickering, discordant minor 2nd, almost a slow trill, giving the vocal a haunting, otherworldly quality. Part of the reason that the song is effective is that the music so completely evokes the lyrical content. The vocal is hushed almost to a whisper, yet completely relaxed. The tension comes from the tautness of the music suggesting a body still teaming with vitality, but a mind resigned to the inevitable.

The inmate’s ruminations have to do with the magnification of the significance of his own death. There are many who are interested in seeing him die because he has killed others. Not many of us know the exact time, place and manner of our deaths. This knowledge leads him to both take note of the most insignificant details of his life (Every lift of my hand./ Coffee cup and back.), and feel the uniqueness of his situation. In particular, this image is striking:

The hammer that I once brought down now hovers over me.
Cast a shadow... across, onto me.

It displays a recognition of his crimes, acceptance of the price he must pay, and a manifestation of the creeping paranoia inherent in being one of the condemned.

At the end the music dies, only to flare back to life for an instant as the inmates sometimes appear to when the injectors switch.

Part of what makes the song so chilling is that while the inmate reflects on his actions and the fact that his actions have led him to this place, he does not appear to feel remorse for what even in his own estimation must be unspeakable crimes. Nor does he consider the state’s treatment of him unjustified. Killing is a part of his worldview.

A song that is almost theatrical in the level of drama evoked. 4 stars.

3 stars.

as always, i like SLH's analysis' regarding music because she's well-versed in in the great musical how-to while i feel kind of stupid arguing with her
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all the while i let my ears hear and my eyes eye - there's nothing quite definite - nothing set in cocnrete until it hurts or caresses me - i'm a binary human being but no i'm not - things repeat and their letdown let me know.

i feel chills a but i don't feel like i'm taken somewhere else
3 stars

I think that you've just taken me somewhere else with this analysis. Thanks.

i wish i could swallow the storm this song stirs in my mind

This is very close to 5 stars in my book. I love everything about this song.

I even suggested that Ed should do a preset of it in Copenhagen to Juvenal. I had to agree when he told me it wouldn't fit though


Great writeup, and I decided to go with 4. It's a little too repetetive to give it the full five.

Nice write up SLH

dead man has never really worked for me. I really like the music and it evokes a nice mood. I think the problem here is Eddie. The lyrics feel vague---more unfinished than evocative and I think this is actually a pretty disappointing vocal performance from Ed. It doesn't quite feel there is anything at stake. With stronger lyrics I'd say this is fine--he's letting the words do the talking. But here they don't quite have enough to say for this to work

I like that version that was released a few years ago more than the original.

2 stars

i'd say four stars. i adore the songs production and ed's guitar work. really beautiful stuff and everything flows perfectly.

Awesome write up.

I agree with Stip that the lyrics feel a little unfinished. For being sparse with words there's too much switching between painting an emotional picture (Sailing on my every step. Inching off of the earth. Is magnified by the things I've done. The thing that I've become.) and a visual picture (Every lift of my hand. Coffee cup and back.). Ed's great strength as a lyricist has never been in writing sparsely, he can come close but always falls short in my books.

I think this song is a little too slow to solely stick with acoustic guitars. I'm not sure who's doing the drums/percussion on this song but they leave me flat.

I think that's it. It's like there are two ideas here, both intriguing but neither sufficently developed

This is 5 stars for me, no question. Ed captures the mood perfectly with this. The bare simple, repetitive guitar shows what i would imagine the last moments alive would be like. Looking back on your life with the knowledge that your existance is about to end. His soft haunting voice carries the song. The simplistic nature of the song is not a drawback, but rather a nessisary part of the mood."A song that is almost theatrical in the level of drama evoked." A perfect summary in a sentence

i have never liked this song, even though ive tried really hard. the music sounds too drone-like to me, i just cant get into it. 1 star.

jblagg has a really good cover of this song in the cover contest (the song he's up against -LROM - is very good too)

I like that in the studio version the vocals are both slightly buried and fairly mumbled, so that you can only catch flickers of what is being said. There's a lot to be said for this approach. In some cases, it can work better than well-written, easily-heard lines. I might be of the thinking that this is one of those songs, but I'm not sure. I'm certainly not glad I ended up reading the lyrics, and am relieved to have forgotten them. It's almost like a less-inbred cousin to the Tom Waits school of thinking that says that matching up the right syllable to the right moment in the song is as important as what you say. Maybe hiding half your words, and letting the parts that fly out at the listener be so strong on their own, is better than revealing some of these clunkers.

great mood, great storytelling. its all there.

Jack Irons played percussion on the song.

I agree with Stip, the lyrics are all nice and existential, but they feel unfinished. They don't really lead anywhere concrete (which I guess could be on purpose), but it just feels like it's lacking a little something.

Musically, the instrumental part is wonderful and works well with the lyrics. Ed's performance isn't anything special, but there's not really room to stretch out on a song like this. I do prefer the live version, like he does on Benaroya, where instead of going into a lower register for the last verse he goes into a higher one. It sounds a little more worried, a bit more unstable, and I think it adds a little tension to the song that it lacked before.

good song, 3 stars

I love this song, 5 stars. Also, for once the best line in the song was used in the title thread. Anyways, I read somewhere that Stone suggested changing the lyrics in the chorus to "Dead Man Walking Around." After listening to the song today, I think that little change could have made the song even better.

Love this one. Though i think i like it better when the 'hammer that i once brought down' is sung higher, then how it is on the recorded version.