I've heard the song dozens of times, but never really listened to it—hardly surprising, since it's pleasantly well-crafted but disposable soft-rock, and neither invites nor rewards undue analysis—and so the line has always just sort of washed across me: As sure as Kilimanjaro rises (something something) above the Serengeti—but this morning, that (something something) bit just jumped out at me: Did he just sing "like a limbus"?
I was excited, for a moment. What an unexpected word to find an L.A. session pro using—and it's a simile within a simile, no less. Limbus: a border or a junction, a leading edge—sometimes used to describe the shadow-line where the moon's bright face turns dark, and for a moment I'm picturing this mountain above the plain like the moonrise, and the cut of light and shadow across its face...
...and then I realize he had, in fact, sung Olympus. So he was essentially describing one big mountain in terms of another big mountain, but one located someplace else. Which is probably the stupidest simile ever.
Still, I bless the rains.
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