Who is the leader of the free world?
The Beacon of Light is my first track in English.
It’s a song about the current state of the leadership in the free world, as we know it.
My paternal grandfather went to Munich, Germany, in 1938 for a study. He met a nice girl, they married and she came to live with him in Gothenburg, Sweden. The following year the Second World War started, and the next year after that, my father was born.
I was born during the Cold War and had my defining youth in the 1980’s. For me, the Berlin Wall had been around ”forever” and Eastern Europe was closed. The leader of the free world was Ronald Reagan, but also Margaret Thatcher was a strong leader, ruling UK for a decade. Meanwhile, a Soviet submarine carrying nuclear weapons got stranded in the archipelago of Karlskrona, Sweden. We lived in fear of a nuclear war.
During WWII charismatic leaders such as Churchill, Rosevelt, Stalin and Hitler were fighting for their beliefs. Fortunately, the former two prevailed.
Presently, the same countries has given us Johnson, Trump, Putin and Merkel.
Who is now the leader of the free world?
In my eyes, the world changed in 2016, when UK and USA lowered it’s ambitions for the world and looked inwards to themselves. It was always a mystery to me how someone like Hitler could have been elected in free elections, but the present polarization gives a certain understanding of how something can escalate badly.
The Beacon of Light is now Angela Merkel, and the EU. Who would have thought that? I hope we’ll soon work together with UK and USA for a better world again.
—
Musically, I admit this song was influenced by 1980’s band DAF.
Click on the album artwork to get to the page of the track, with lyrics
and links to services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud etc.