What does "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas mean?
SONG MEANING: "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas is about life being meaningless and how our dreams and passions really mean nothing.
"Dust in the Wind" Lyrics Meaning
It's time for a throwback song explanation--we're going old school today. There are few songs of the last forty years that have had the impact on listeners that "Dust in the Wind" has had. For one thing, it's deeper than most songs. Anyone who throws it up next to any Justin Bieber song (or almost any current Top 40 song besides "Stressed Out" by Twenty One Pilots) is going to understand immediately that "Dust in the Wind" is a song about something (even though it's oddly about nothing).It has meaning.
In addition, it's beautiful. There's something about "Dust in the Wind." It's more than just entertainment. It's art. It's beautiful, and it means something.
"Dust in the Wind" was released by Kansas in 1977 on their album Point of Know Return. The song made it to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978, but never achieved that kind of fame. Rather, the fame that "Dust in the Wind" has accomplished is better understood when you understand the lyrics. The haunting melodies and minimalistic lyrics are about the fleetingness of life and how little what we hold onto really is.
Line-by-Line Lyrics Explanation
Just a forewarning: Kansas doesn't really seem to define the stanza very well, so I'm just going to call them by their numbers (i.e. "Stanza 1," "Stanza 2," etc.)
In Stanza 1 Steve Walsh sings, "I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone." Time moves on with or without the narrator, and he can't seem to hold onto the moments that he wants to savor and enjoy. He sings that "his dreams pass before [his] eyes, a curiosity." His dreams are things that he'd like to do or to accomplish. But even though they are his dreams and he wants to do them, he seems them just as a curiosity--something you go to see at the circus. He realizes that they're nothing; they're "dust in the wind." That's "[a]ll they are . . ."
Stanza 2 continues the heavy, hopeless imagery, describing the experience of living as a "[s]ame old song" and "just a drop of water in an endless sea." Using the perspective he's seeing everything from, Kansas' narrator sees so other people's dreams and realizes that his dreams are nothing special because everyone has them.
And even though he tries to attain those dreams, "[a]ll we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see." In the end, it's all still "dust in the wind." We eventually die, and life will go on without us whether we accomplished our dreams or not.
Stanza 3 seems to act as a bridge because the structure is unique. Walsh sings, "Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky." He's saying that we're all going to die and all of our dreams with us. The world will still be here and will still be indifferent to the fact that we once existed here.
With a sobering observation, Walsh sings, "It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy." We are going to die and no matter how successful we are, we're still going to die, and we can't change that fact.
Stanza 4 is especially haunting. The guitar keeps playing it's haunting rhythm, and Walsh repeats, "Dust in the wind / All we are is dust in the wind." We're here today and gone tomorrow. Once we're gone, it's all over.
Just a moment...
That's his message, and it's a sobering one. If you're looking for a biblical perspective on this song, you're going to be surprised that the Bible actually corroborates this message. Don't believe me? Read Ecclesiastes 1. Of course, there's more to the Bible than that, but God and Solomon do agree that a physical life here on earth alone is pretty pointless.
