Song of the Day #5,231: ‘Kimberly’ – Patti Smith

‘Kimberly’ is a song from Patti Smith’s 1975 debut album, Horses. It is about a time Smith held her baby sister, Kimberly, in her arms during a lightning storm at her family’s New Jersey home.

The song has lots of great detail, unsurprising given Smith’s talents as both a poet and memoirist, and a melody that The Smiths later interpolated for their song ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.’

Smith had this to say about the track:

Housing developments were a new thing, postwar, they’d build them for poor people in areas that nobody wanted. Ours was literally on a swamp. We lived across the street from an old abandoned barn that got hit by lightning shortly after Kimberly was born. I went outside and I was holding her, watching this barn in flames. Hundreds of bats lived in it, and you could hear them screeching, and see bats and owls and buzzards flying out.

The wall is high, the black barn
The babe in my arms in her swaddling clothes
And I know soon that the sky will split
And the planets will shift
Balls of jade will drop and existence will stop

Little sister, the sky is falling, I don’t mind, I don’t mind
Little sister, the fates are calling on you

Ah, here I stand again in this old ‘lectric whirlwind
The sea rushes up my knees like flame
And I feel like just some misplaced Joan Of Arc
And the cause is you lookin’ up at me
Oh baby, I remember when you were born
It was dawn and the storm settled in my belly
And I rolled in the grass and I spit out the gas
And I lit a match and the void went flash
And the sky split and the planets hit
Balls of jade dropped and existence stopped, stopped, stop, stop

Little sister, the sky is falling, I don’t mind, I don’t mind
Little sister, the fates are calling on you

I was goin’ crazy, so crazy I knew I could break through with you
So with one hand I rocked you and with one heart I reached for you
Ah, I knew your youth was for the takin’, fire on a mental plane
So I ran through the fields as the bats with their baby vein faces
Burst from the barn and flames in a violent violet sky
And I fell on my knees and pressed you against me
Your soul was like a network of spittle
Like glass balls movin’ in like cold streams of logic
And I prayed as the lightning attacked
That something will make it go crack, something will make it go crack
Something will make it go crack, something will make it go crack

The palm trees fall into the sea
It doesn’t matter much to me
As long as you’re safe, Kimberly
And I can gaze deep
Into your starry eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby
Looking deep in your eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby
Into your starry eyes, oh

Oh, in your starry eyes, baby
Looking deep in your eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby, oh

Oh, looking deep in your eyes, baby
Into your starry eyes, baby, looking deep in your eyes, baby

One thought on “Song of the Day #5,231: ‘Kimberly’ – Patti Smith

  1. Dana Gallup says:

    Works better as a poem than it does a song IMO.

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