The better half of the lyrics to this song are just fine, but the lower half are immeasurably bad. Like, "how is this on any record ever" bad. And I understand that that just comes from Mike not being someone who writes a lot of lyrics, and it being such a personal song that others couldn't do much to edit it...but it's still bad.

Also, there's an "overcomposed" quality to the music and structure that, when delivered with such emotive bombast, both feels too prog for my tastes and is not altogether sincere sounding. If they wanted this type of song on the album, they should have made it to the pinnacle statement of all of the political rhetoric that led up to it, and then replaced Gone with a more heartfelt personal (and perhaps atmospheric) Mike-penned song.

If they wanted this type of song on the album, they should have made it to the pinnacle statement of all of the political rhetoric that led up to it, and then replaced Gone with a more heartfelt personal (and perhaps atmospheric) Mike-penned song.