The Good Left Undone

I decided to take a look into one of the Chicago-born band “Rise Against”’s most successful songs they’ve ever made, “The Good Left Undone”. I feel that this work, specifically from the lyrics, is very real and not really artificial at all because despite the overall message being a bit clichéd, the way it’s presented is really refreshing.

I chose this work because the band itself was created relatively recently so they’re still extremely popular with a large crowd. This song heavily reflects the ideologies of our current society by enforcing the (somewhat clichéd) ideal that unless we all change what we’re doing pretty heavily, the world is going to eventually give up on us and we won’t be able to fix what we’ve done to Earth.

An idea presented throughout the song is that while we’re already pretty far gone, there’s still hope for us to change. This is evidenced by the opening line of the song where lyricist Tim Mcllrath says “in a field where nothing grew but weeds, I found a flower at my feet”. He’s perpetuating the idea that despite what we’ve done to the land that we live on, there’s still hope for us to change it. This isn’t surprising to hear from the band, because an idea that the band often talks about in their music is saving the environment.

This piece of music is very important to talk about because it’s perpetuating the extremely important idea that we need to change what we’re doing to the Earth and we need to do it quick.

If you'd like to hear the song, click on the video below