Up Here In Heaven

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Up Here In Heaven by Chris de Burgh , reviewed by Dave Doohan
Album: This Way Up

Up Here in Heaven can reasonably be described as a protest song against the futility of war, however, to do so is to dismiss the excellently crafted lyrical and musical content as illustrated in this review.

Drums roll, the music is brought to a crescendo, then the heavy beat rolls in like a rhythmic marching song, and the lyrics begin….

"Up on the hill I see it begin,
Marking the heroes where they fall
In the stone, in the stone the names of those who have gone."

This conjures up pictures of burial grounds seen after many a war down the ages, row upon row of gravestones marking the presence of the dead. Now he switches our attention,

"And over the river, there is a place,
Where they remember boys and men,
Widows talk, widows talk of all that they could have been."

Perhaps this is a church or a cenotaph, some war memorial maybe, but the image is of crying widows, trying to think what might have been if these men hadn't been killed, the richness of life and experience the could have provided if they weren't now lost to the world forever. But what's this….

"We can hear you, we can hear you whisper our names
We can see you, we can see you reading our names"

The ghosts of the dead, they are watching proceedings, and they continue with a message of their own…

"Up here in heaven, we stand together
Both the enemy and the friend, 'til the end of time,
Up here in heaven, we are forever
There is only one God up here, for all of the world"

This is sung in a more upbeat way, and the message is clear. The dead, who fought against each other for whatever reason, maybe a religious war, now find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder, friends under one God. And, unlike on Earth, when they exist for but a fleeting moment, for them it is now eternity. It serves to illustrate the futility of the wars they have just died for.

"What of the children caught in the war,
How can we tell them what it's for,
When they cry, when they cry are voices heard anymore?

Are you listening, are you listening men of the war?
There is nothing, there is nothing worth dying for;"

What of the children? How are they supposed to understand the reasons for which families are torn apart, neighbours they once played happily with now set to go to war against each other? Where once the anguished cries of children would bring men to their senses, what now? Often they are forced into the war themselves, forced to grow up when there is no reason to, losing their precious childhood far to quickly. The last line sums it up - there is NOTHING worth dying for.

"Up here in heaven, we stand together,
Both the enemy and the friend, 'til the end of time
Up here in heaven we are forever,
There is only one God up here, for all of the world;
There is only one God up here, the God of the World."

We would do well to heed this message, but if history is any judge, sadly we won't. A superb song, one of Chris' best ever.