Crucial Track for May 3, 2025

"Time Stand Still" by Rush

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What’s your favorite collaboration between artists?

That's a tough question. I think there are a lot of really good collaborations out there to celebrate so I'm caveatting this with the fact that it's my favorite collaboration that came to mind right now. I'll probably think of another one later and be all like "damn, I wish I'd thought of that".

I'm going with Time Stand Still by Rush which featured vocals from Aimee Mann.

I'm a huge fan of Rush, I'd put them up there as my, overall, favourite band of all time. They are certainly my most listened band as my last.fm profile would tell you.

This is a song about how it's important to stop and just enjoy the moment. Something that in our modern, always-connected-to-the-internet world, can be easy to forget. Life moves fast, things change, the things we enjoy slip away from us and it's important that we slow down and enjoy them. Something I'm coming to appreciate a lot more in my mid-30s. Particularly poignant today, the day before my birthday.

Summer’s going fast–
Nights growing colder
Children growing up —
old friends growing older
Experience slips away…

The composition of the song is relatively typical for 80s and 90s Rush. It's layered, its melodic, there's a catchy synthesizer hook with a sort of dizi sound applied to. There's complex drums from Peart. There's a dynamic bassline from Lee. There's even a short instrumental section (ok so that's less typical for Rush).

I also love the now dorky-seeming music video which shows the band members and Mann superimposed against various backgrounds and occasionally cuts them out and has them flying around the screen.

10/10 track would Rush again.