The Light Comes From Within by Linda McCartney

Album: Wide Prairie (1998)

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Songfacts®:

Linda McCartney died in April 1998, and in October the same year her widower the multi-talented Paul McCartney released a posthumous album, Wild Prairie.

"The Light Comes From Within" is the 6th track on this album, and the last song she ever recorded. Linda played piano on it as well as supplying the vocals. She was diagnosed with breast cancer some three years earlier and by this time she had almost certainly come to terms with her impending death, so the theme of the song may be deduced from this fact coupled with the title. It is also clear from its in places earthy language that she was taking a swipe at someone, in particular "critics who in the past have ridiculed Linda McCartney for being untalented as well as for her beliefs in vegetarianism and animal rights" according to a BBC report of January 1999. She was of course an immensely talented woman, a successful photographer before she met McCartney (her second husband), she would later win acclaim in this field entirely on her own merit.
"The Light Comes From Within" was released as a CD picture disk backed by another McCartney/McCartney composition, "I Got Up", and was unsurprisingly banned by Auntie Beeb. McCartney started a campaign to have the ban lifted, but the song never received airplay, even though at least one DJ found another excuse not to play it. >>>
Suggestion credit:
Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2

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