Bruce Hornsby and the Range and the album ‘The Way It Is’

The debut album for Bruce Hornsby and the Range kicked off April of 1986 with one wallop of an album. The Way It Is as an album earned the group a best new artist Grammy Award. The band’s genre landed them in Adult Contemporary, Heartland Rock and Pop/Rock.

On the Western Skyline opens The Way It Is album by Bruce Hornsby and the Range. As quoted on Songfacts here, On the Western Skyline “is about imagining that there might be a future love waiting for the singer somewhere in the western skyline.”

In charting as high as 14th in the United States, Every Little Kiss is “sung from the perspective of a worker who is far away from his sweetheart,” as quoted here. Thematically, this song hits me in a similar place as On the Western Skyline.

Mandolin Rain charted 70th in the United Kingdom and 4th in the United States. The metaphor for heartbreak invokes “a failed southern romance between two people who enjoy the rainfall and spent a lot of intimate time in it, but now that she’s gone, the singer mourns her loss and is reminded of her when he hears the rain.”

The Long Race invokes winter as a stand in for loneliness and longing for the love of another. The singer invokes an eastern gaze in maintaining the view of continued vigilance of ultimately getting to love once again.

In charting 15th in the United Kingdom and first in the United States, The Way It Is deals with the Civil Rights Movement and the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the United States. As quoted here, the “lyrics in this song deal with the need to resist complacency and never resign yourself to racial injustice as the status quo.”

Down the Road Tonight is the song of the singer’s introduction to a woman acting as a prostitute, lyrically spoken from the perspective of an adolescent being introduced to the notion by older kids and young adults in his social circle.

The Wild Frontier lyrically explores the exploration for love from learning of a passionate sense of love in Down the Road Tonight to seeking love in exotic locations. The singer learns that this isn’t the proper place for love to bloom for him, so seeks such in getting back to the familiar.

The River Runs Low invokes the sense of loss raised in the song Mandolin Rain. The absence of rain metaphorically operates at the central level of longing for the love interest whose left town. The singer additionally has been down on his luck from a financial standpoint, thus diminishing his ability to follow his lady.

The Red Plains brings The Way It Is to an end with the sad tale of having built a home and life with his love, only to see the home morally, metaphorically and in reality burn to the ground in what the singer feels is a personal failing. The song is a dream lost with moral self-recrimination tacked on, setting the deal up in flames. My interpretation, though, is that the love perseveres.

The primary Bruce Hornsby and the Range band for the Way It Is album included Bruce Hornsby of Williamsburg, Virginia, David Mansfield of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, George Marinelli of Staten Island, New York City, New York, Joe Puerta of Los Angeles, California, and John Molo of Bethesda, Maryland. Additionally, John Gilutin of Los Angeles, California, Sean Hopper of San Francisco, California, and Huey Lewis of New York City, New York contributed to the album.

Matt – Saturday, April 1, 2023