This is a beautiful song. I think a lot of the comments are correct, it is about ambition, the inevitibility of time, and ultimately, death. But it is not perhaps about failed ambition, or, directly about Chan Marshall.
"The Greatest" is the name of Muhammed Ali's autobiography. The Album cover features a pair of boxing gloves, the song contains the lines, "Once i wanted to be the greatest / two fists of solid rock", and, "no wind or waterfall could stop me".
It is perhaps a metaphoric history of his life which draws paralells with her own. Ali is now very ill, a shadow of his all powerfull former self. Marshall nurtured a massive ego that crashed and burned with alcoholism and drug abuse. In any case, this song has haunting, emotional power carried simply by the beatifully vunerable qualities of her voice.
This is a beautiful song. I think a lot of the comments are correct, it is about ambition, the inevitibility of time, and ultimately, death. But it is not perhaps about failed ambition, or, directly about Chan Marshall.
"The Greatest" is the name of Muhammed Ali's autobiography. The Album cover features a pair of boxing gloves, the song contains the lines, "Once i wanted to be the greatest / two fists of solid rock", and, "no wind or waterfall could stop me".
It is perhaps a metaphoric history of his life which draws paralells with her own. Ali is now very ill, a shadow of his all powerfull former self. Marshall nurtured a massive ego that crashed and burned with alcoholism and drug abuse. In any case, this song has haunting, emotional power carried simply by the beatifully vunerable qualities of her voice.