Manhattan Project (song)


"Manhattan Project" is a 1985 song by Canadian progressive rock band Rush, named after the WWII project that created the first atomic bomb. The song appeared on Rush's eleventh studio album Power Windows in 1985. "Manhattan Project" is the third track on the album and clocks in at 5:07. Despite not being released as a single, it did reach #10 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock Chart in January 1986.
Lyricist Neil Peart read "a pile of books" about the Manhattan Project before writing the lyrics so that he had a proper understanding of what the project was really about. The song consists of four verses, addressing the following:
  1. A time, during the era of World War II,
  2. A man, representing J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists around the world who were engaged in nuclear weapons research,
  3. A place, the Los Alamos facility in New Mexico at which American scientists carried out their work,
  4. A man, Paul Tibbets, pilot of the bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
The chorus refers to the explosion as "the big bang", in allusion to the start of a new universe following the singular event, although the absolute reference is the use of Fat Man and Little Boy, America's two nuclear bombs to bring an end to the Pacific conflict with Japan, which only happened after both were dropped, repeating the theme of the verses marking when and/or where "it all began." The remaining lines refer to the start of the Atomic Age and the reactions of different segments of the global population.