https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/27/nfjw-d27.html
Excerpt:
The second and fourth tracks, “Two Suns in the Sunset” and “The Gunner’s Dream” are from the 1983 Pink Floyd album The Final Cut, one of the most powerful antiwar rock music albums ever produced. The first of these contemplates the end of the world with a sunset in the west while another fire ball is illuminating the sky in the east, as Waters sings, “Two suns in the sunset / Could be the human race is run.”
The second of these two numbers has Waters playing piano and telling the story of the thoughts of a World War II airman gunner as he is falling to his death after having been shot down. Like Martin Luther King Jr., the gunner repeats “I had a dream, I had a dream,” and then he offers a vision of the possible future of society:
A place to stay, enough to eat
Somewhere, old heroes shuffle safely down the street
Where you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears
And what’s more, no one ever disappears
You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door
You can relax on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don’t blow holes in bandsmen by remote control
And everyone has recourse to the law
And no one kills the children anymore
No one kills the children anymore
Writing about the original recording on the 30th anniversary of The Final Cut’s release in 2013, Rachel Mann of The Quietus commented that “The Gunner’s Dream” was the “centrepiece of the album.” Mann observed that the track “tenderly imagines the lost hopes and expectations of a bomber gunner shot down and falling to his death over Berlin” and that “Waters’ voice is beautifully matched to words whose understatement adds to the power.” This “beautiful match” is even more pronounced on the new version.
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