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Untitled edit
I know this is slated for improvement in the Songs project, but it needed an edit. The explanation of the figures dying relatively young is wrong. Ho Chi Min and HG Wells both died at 79. Anna McNeill Whistler is famous for being painted at age 67, a decade before her death. Alexander Graham Bell was 75. Chico Marx was 74. Buster Keaton only died in the 1960s, at age 70. Henry Luce was 68. Henri Rousseau was 66.
It's true some of the people on that list died young (Russ Columbo and John Wilkes Booth probably the youngest at 26). But that doesn't negate the fact that the list includes people who lived a wide variety of life spans. Also, the line about "before the work of any of them was truly finished" is both awkwardly worded and wrong. Indeed, John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, which Booth thought was a super duper life achievement. Today, I think there is wide agreement that doing so was a catastrophe. And Caryl Chessman's case was a bit of a cause célèbre in the 1950s and '60s, but the fact remains that he was a kidnapper and a rapist. So I'm not sure that Neil Diamond laments the rest of their work being 'left undone.'
If anything, the song seems to say that everybody lives in the same world. And almost everyone would like to live longer, even if just for a bit. Joey h (talk) 03:28, 22 June 2015 (UTC)