Sample Song Interpretation

"Out There"

Safe behind these windows and these parapets of stone
Gazing at the people down below me
All my life I watch them as I hide up here alone
Hungry for the histories they show me
All my life I memorize their faces
Knowing them as they will never know me
All my life I wonder how it feels to pass a day
Not above them
But part of them

And out there
Living in the sun
Give me one day out there
All I ask is one
To hold forever

Out there
Where they all live unaware
What I'd give
What I'd dare
Just to live one day out there

Out there among the millers and the weavers and their wives
Through the roofs and gables I can see them
Ev'ry day they shout and scold and go about their lives
Heedless of the gift it is to be them
If I was in their skin
I'd treasure ev'ry instant

Out there
Strolling by the Seine
Taste a morning out there
Like ordinary men
Who freely walk about there
Just one day and then
I swear I'll be content
With my share
Won't resent
Won't despair
Old and bent
I won't care
I'll have spent
One day
Out there


This is Quasimoto’s solo from the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The lyrics show us how desperate he is to break out of his “prison” and experience life among the people he watches every day and has come to know well and envy. Quasimoto feels fettered by the walls that isolate him from the outside world, and by his evil master Judge Frollo who has convinced him that he is ugly and that he would not be accepted in the “real world.” He has a real reverence for life and people and feels that he could die happy if he could spend just one day as a "normal" person.