The Riddle by Five for Fighting

Album: Two Lights (2006)

Charted: 40

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Songfacts®:

This song, as with much of Five For Fighting's material, deals with mortality. However, on the official site of the band, primary member and songwriter, John Ondrasik states that while our fallibility is an underlying theme in the song, it is ultimately a love song from a father to his son. Ondrasik claims he took two and a half years to write it.
The video for the song retains its theme of paternity, as it features Ondrasik driving a blue Mustang that his father gave him.

Comments: 2

Jake from Naperville, IlAt the beginning, the dying man tells him he would find the meaning of life if he listens to a Bob Dylan song, sees a lunar eclipse, and "let an angel swing and make you swoon." After he does these things, he figures out that life is about loving those around you.

by the way, i think that "let an angel swing and make you swoon" is a reference to the LA Angels. John Ondrasek is from LA and is a huge sports fan. At the end of the song, he refers back to the answer given to him by the old man as "The batter swings and the summer flies as I look into my angels eyes, a song plays on while the moon is hiding over me, something comes over me."

I initially thought all these years that this was a reference to seeing his kid playing baseball and looking into his wife's eyes, but now I realize there really isn't a woman in this song and the angel's eyes he looks into are probably his kid's, while the baseball reference is probably the LA Angels.

just my two cents.
Eric from Mentor, OhI liked the song before I read the lyrics... Now, I love it. Beautiful.

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