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The song Building the Perfect Beast by Don Henley repeats the following phrases several times:

Soon he will be released
Glory hallelujah!
We're building the perfect beast

Why does this include the phrase "Glory hallelujah!"? Is there a religious meaning intended here? And what is the "perfect beast" in this instance?

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The perfect beast is humanity's self-made doom.

The beast that we keep building is a (modern/future) human, that has lifted itself "All the way to Malibu out of the land of talking drum"; someone who has "The power of reason" and is "the top of the heap", someone who "kills things he doesn't eat".

The whole song is a description of a self-created doom based on our self-destruction:

We've found the lock and turned the key
We're shakin' up those building blocks
Going deeper into that box- (Pandora wouldn't like it)

We have the power to get our life better and longer, we are trying to become gods ( "Olympus or bust!") yet there is a price to pay.

Relieve all pain and suffering
And lift us out of the dark
Turn us all into methuselah-
But where are we gonna park?

The semi-religious "Glory hallelujah!" is used sarcastically here - we are creating our own doom and we are happy to do so, because

For we have met the enemy -and he is us

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The elites who are controlled by the fallen angels are the subject of the song. They too want to be gods (“Olympus or bust”) & are messing with DNA, the formerly secret building blocks of life, to create the perfect Beast that will be indwelt by Apollyon when he rises from the pit. They sarcastically say to Jesus,

Relieve all pain and suffering

This refers to taking ALL of mankind’s sins on the cross to lift us out of the dark and bring us to His marvelous kingdom of light.

And lift us out of the dark
Turn us all into Methuselah

Those saved are promised to be given glorified bodies by the LORD that will never age, get sick, or die & thus live forever, analogous to the man in history who lived the longest - Methuselah at 969 years.

But where are we gonna park?

Sarcastic - they erroneously believe there won’t be enough room on earth for all these people who will never die.

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  • What's your evidence that Don Henley was thinking of those things when he wrote this song? It seems especially strange to say that this had any reference at all to salvation, for example, given that the author isn't a Christian. Jun 14, 2022 at 12:02

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