Limelight (song)

Infobox Single
Name = Limelight


Artist = Rush
from Album = Moving Pictures
Released = February 28, 1981
Format =
Recorded = October – November 1980 at Le Studio, Morin Heights, Quebec
Genre = Progressive rock
Length = 4:23
Label = Mercury Records
Producer = Rush and Terry Brown
Chart position =

#4 (Modern Rock Tracks)

#55 (US)

Last single = "Tom Sawyer"
(1981)
This single = "Limelight"
(1981)
Next single = "Vital Signs"
(1981)
Misc = Extra tracklisting
Album = Moving Pictures
Type = studio
prev_track = "YYZ"
prev_no = Track 3
this_track = "Limelight"
track_no = Track 4
next_track = "The Camera Eye"
next_no = Track 5Audiosample
Upper caption = Audio Sample
Audio file = Rush-Limelight.ogg

"Limelight" is a song by the Canadian progressive rock band Rush. It first appeared on the 1981 album "Moving Pictures". Written by Rush's primary lyricist Neil Peart, "Limelight" expresses Peart's discomfort with Rush's success and being in the "limelight." Limelight also employs a number of Shakespearian phrases.

Motivation

Geddy Lee describes the motivation for "Limelight" in a 1988 interview:

cquote|Limelight was probably more of Neil's song than a lot of the songs on that album in the sense that his feelings about being in the limelight and his difficulty with coming to grips with fame and autograph seekers and a sudden lack of privacy and sudden demands on his time ... he was having a very difficult time dealing with.

I mean we all were, but I think he was having the most difficulty of the three of us adjusting; in the sense that I think he's more sensitive to more things than Alex and I are, it's harder for him to deal with those interruptions on his personal space and his desire to be alone. Being very much a person who needs that solitude, to have someone coming up to you constantly and asking for your autograph is a major interruption in your own little world.

I guess in the one sense that we're a little bit like misfits in the fact that we've chosen this profession that has all this extreme hype and this sort of self-hyping world that we've chosen to live in, and we don't feel comfortable really in that kind of role. [cite episode | title = Moving Pictures | series = In the Studio with Redbeard | serieslink = In the Studio with Redbeard | airdate = 1988]

In a 2007 interview, Alex Lifeson gives his take on "Limelight":

Notes