"I was working two murders on the four phones on my desk at police headquarters, when it suddenly happened. For the first few seconds I didn't give it any thought. "What the Hell" I told myself "They'll come back on". I then turned in my chair, looked out the window in the direction of Wall Street, the financial district, the World Trade Center, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Everything was pitch black. 'My God', I remembered saying, 'That's a blackout'"

[Verse 1]
In the heart of the city that never sleeps
We took a bite of the apple and spat it out on the street

[Chorus 1]
A lightning struck on the powerlines
And the skyline was painted black
A sign for jokers and anarchists
To burn buildings, light it up again


[Verse 2]
The baseball game at the Shea Stadium
Ended in the bottom of the sixth inning

[Chorus 2]
A lightning struck on the powerlines
And the skyline was painted black
In the shadows of Sam
A break in history
Panic attacks on Wall Street
A sense of freedom to the underclass
You have to fight your way up through the dark
Guided by thousand fires in the street

[Bridge]
For my whole life I didn't know
If I even really existed
But I do!
People are starting to notice and who's laughing now?

"Where were you when the lights went out?"
"The lights went out, I was in the movies and seeing This Side of Midnight. And it was a terrific movie and a great sexy scene, and it suddenly blacked out"
"Less than an hour after the electric light failed, individual New Yorkers in most neighborhoods were directing traffic. But in the worst slums of the city, the light of mindless violence lit up the sky, as the blackout divided the town into two societies separate and unequal. In the Bronx, in Harlem and South Jamaica and Brooklyn many of the have-nots abandoned whatever restraint had kept them in check. Tens of thousands of poor became a disorganized army of the night"

"The lights went out at 9:30, and about there was a dead silence for possibly three to five minutes, and suddenly a yell came up from the street, the sound of, of, I guess it must have been a thousand voices just, just at a scream of, of, exhaustion. I don't know, really, and I think there's gonna be Hell to pay tonight"


"It was not only the hardened criminals, the known felons of Spanish Harlem had joined the human locust sloth. The cover of total darkness allowed the lowest qualities of previously peaceful people to surface"

[Verse 3]
The riots in the streets tonight
Shoots your nerves to sky
I don't give a fuck about tomorrow
Because tonight I really feel alive

"Thousands of East Harlem residents have taken to the streets in an ocean of looting and burning that shocked many of their neighbors. Well, how did the media respond to this blackout? Did they help or did they enflame the problems? We'll examine that issue in just a moment"

[Chorus 1]
A lightning struck on the powerlines
And the skyline was painted black
Sign for jokers and anarchists
To burn buildings, light it up again