With even the simplest, most direct pop songs and pop songwriters, there’s a natural instinct to avoid the clunky-to-my-young-ear repetition of bombs there, to find another rhyme, to find a clever-er way to put it. But now the bombs double-shot strikes me as shocked, indignant, almost childlike emphasis, and only further underscores the plain fact that “Zombie” is the hardest, toughest, brashest, scariest, and most thrilling rock song released by anybody in 1994. And maybe the trick to avoiding tumbling down Badass Condescension Mountain is to just say that and move on.
