“Trees” by Rush

Rush put "The Trees" on Hemispheres in 1978, and in it Neil Peart, the band's drummer and lyricist, spins out a whole fable: the maples of a forest resent the towering oaks for hogging the sunlight, and the ending levels the whole forest with the woodcutter's tools. Conrad Bibens of the St. Joseph News-Press heard it as an allegory of the Quebec sovereignty movement, maples for its supporters and oaks for English-speaking Canadians. Peart himself, asked by Modern Drummer in 1980 whether the lyric carried a message, said no: it came in a flash, when he spotted a cartoon of trees acting foolish while he was working on something else.

On the live Exit...Stage Left it grew a long acoustic guitar prelude called "Broon's Bane", and Rolling Stone readers voted it number 8 among the band's 10 best songs.

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