† NightWish: Islander †

"Memories can be a burden that prevents you from taking your steps, or they can shine a light on your life while the tears fly by."

"Islander" is a great song written by NightWish with a total different style of performing compared to other songs of theirs.

The music video of this song really impressed me as it has a steampunk (a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s) theme with flying ships, and features the old sailor walking along a beach through the fog dragging a boat behind him and haunted by ghosts of his past. Later we see him in a flashback as a young man playing the uilleann pipes, with trees blossoming after he ends his life by dropping anchor and being relieved from his burdens. <read more here>


I find the lyrics of the song is very well written and the music video has appropriately suits every lyrics of the song.

An old man by a seashore... At the end of day...
Gazes the horizon... With seawinds in his face...
Tempest-tossed island... Seasons all the same...
Anchorage unpainted... And a ship without a name...

Sea without a shore for the banished one unheard...
He lightens the beacon, light at the end of world...
Showing the way lighting hope in their hearts...
The ones on their travels homeward from afar...

This is for long-forgotten... Light at the end of the world...
Horizon crying... The tears he left behind long ago...

The albatross is flying... Making him daydream...
The time before he became... One of the world`s unseen...
Princess in the tower... Children in the fields...
Life gave him it all:... An island of the universe...

Now his love`s a memory... A ghost in the fog...
He sets the sails one last time... Saying farewell to the world...
Anchor to the water... Seabed far below...
Grass still in his feet... And a smile beneath his brow...

This is for long-forgotten... Light at the end of the world...
Horizon crying... The tears he left behind so long ago...