Lyrics
We paint the past in neon light a flawless retro dream
Beneath the glow of MTV or so it’s always seemed
We talk about the summer nights the innocence we had
Filtering the decades out deleting all the bad
But memories are fragile things rewound and taped again
We keep the music playing but forget the world back then
Oh we look back through a golden lens blinded by our youth
We mistake the comfort of a child for the historical truth
It wasn’t that the world was safe or free of global tears
We just didn’t feel the weight of the world back in those years
In eighty Mount St Helens blew the earth began to shake
By eighty one Columbia had a brand new trail to make
In eighty two the Falklands bled a sudden tragic war
And eighty three brought Star Wars threats right to the Cold War door
A chemical cloud in Bhopal fell in eighty four
But we only remember the arcade games and the fashion that we wore
Oh we look back through a golden lens blinded by our youth
We mistake the comfort of a child for the historical truth
It wasn’t that the world was safe or free of global tears
We just didn’t feel the weight of the world back in those years
In eighty five the Soviet tide began to shift and turn
By eighty six Chernobyl’s skies began to burn
An INF treaty in eighty seven tried to calm the dread
Before the shock of eighty eight when Lockerbie fell overhead
And though the wall in eighty nine came tumbling to the floor
It took a decade’s worth of fear to open up that door
The eighties weren’t a simpler time the world was on the brink
With proxy wars and nuclear fears much closer than we think
But when you’re ten the world is small your worries are so light
You don’t see the shadows creeping in the middle of the night
It’s not that there were fewer ghosts or less of a design
It’s just that we were younger then and everything felt fine
So spin the track and wear the clothes and let the nostalgia play
But remember that the human heart remembers its own way
The drama was as heavy then the scars were just as deep
We only smile because we had a sweeter sleep
Yeah we only smile because we had a sweeter sleep