musician

The Trampoline Scene

~ tryingartist ~ Leave a comment

So, we’re moving on.

Recordings are becoming a bit more crisp. The playing is improving slowly, especially the drumming. Chords now have numbers after the letters semi-frequently. The lyrics make sense for good proportions of the songs. The singing is moving from a lowly 4/10 to the giddy heights of 5/10.

March 2008, I am 16, and I have just written a love song for my girlfriend. It’s called The Trampoline Song, and it’s quite insipid. I couldn’t really muster any real love. It has one clear reference: we met on a trampoline at a house party, about 7 months before I wrote the song. Apart from that, there is very little true feeling in it, and I think it shows. In my defence, I don’t think this track was ever presented as a love song to that girlfriend. Maybe it was just designed to exist as a little ditty and – oh look! that’s a reference to us! he’s so cute!

This is one of 3 songs that are related to this girlfriend. All Along is another one, and the third will come later. Listening to The Trampoline Scene now makes me feel a bit guilty. Of the 3, it’s the only one that was conceived in positive spirits – the only one that was meant to reflect positively on our relationship. And it just feels a bit false. The cheap jokes in the second verse:

You and I could try to fly,
Although if we did we probably first should say goodbye.
You and I could try to fly,
In fact, no we might die.

I’m just another embarrassed teenager, completely unable to commit to any form of real sincerity. I began with a plan to write a nice song, but felt immediately compelled to write some spanners into it.

I’ll be honest and say that I am still very much a spanner-addict. But now when I write a song, I take out the bit at the beginning with faint sounds of rustling and the metronome.

I guess I might have to mention that this song appears to be influenced by Jack Johnson. I never owned an album by him, but, like everyone else in the world, I did learn how to play Banana Pancakes and Sitting Waiting Wishing on guitar. ‘banana pancakes’, ‘trampoline’ – both from the twee hell of love that is universally relatable, and instantly forgettable.

 

 

What A Shame

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This song slipped through the radar, probably because its more recent version, helpfully entitled ‘What A Shame New’, was created in 2008. The original, however, was written in 2007, and it shows. It shows so much that I can’t understand why I chose to go over it again. And, given that I did go over it again, why did I do so little with it? Actually, come to think of it, did I make it worse?

Yeah, comparing them right now, I think I did.

The newer one is better only in the sense that it has fewer actual mistakes. The singing is marginally better. But the mix is much worse; the earlier one sounds rougher and edgier, like the whole thing is coming out of a shit guitar amp. My voice has an earnest aggression to it which suits the lofi amateurish noise of the recording. The newer one is muddy and bassy, flat, uninspiring, boring.

Both versions have my characteristically nonsensical lyrics from the aged 14-15 era. They’re just terrible, I mean the comical lines:

‘You’re looking at the man in the crowd
Who without a sound
Keeps everyone’s head down.
Maybe it’s his gun’

are kind of stupid but yeah ok maybe it’s a joke song let’s give this guy a chance. But then we get to the bridge:

‘What a shame I could not stay
All alone I’ll be afraid
Why work when you’ve got time?
You should come and see one of mine’

What am I trying to say? As always, just throwing words together at random. It must be the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ fault.

I can’t think of a single biographical thing to say about this song. It summons no memories for me, beyond the fact that I re-recorded some it completely pointlessly. I perhaps remember a vague feeling of hope: ‘yeah… maybe if the drums are played more tightly… and the harmonies are sung better… we could have something…’ And then an inevitable small but numbing disappointment when the song remained the same old dead horse.

It’s amusing because after the last few songs I had begun to think that my past self had turned a corner. I had planned to include in this post the declaration that we had firmly reached the middle era of my music, and that a touch of professionalism would start to creep in from now. Well, the thought is banished.

What a shame.

 

NB: I have run out of space on my Soundcloud (almost 50 songs… and we’ve got nowhere). Songs will now be posted as basic YouTube videos.

NB2: the guitar in What A Shame sounds like the guitar in this:

 

 

Little Green Lane

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Up next is possibly the wettest song I’ve ever written. Well, top 3 at least. It’s drenched with wetness. It wouldn’t be dry if you covered the mp3 in towels, dropped it in the Sahara, and told it to find its way home.

The title, I imagine, was meant to be figurative. Like ‘Little Green Lane’ represents this sort of twee suburb-y existence that the love-torn and anguished hero flees from to seek life anew in the unknown. Unfortunately, because the song is literally dripping wet, it trips and falls into the bottomless pit it hopes to escape from. The song becomes the very nightmare I’m singing about. Everything about it, from the trudging opening chord sequence, to that pleading lead guitar line in the 2nd verse (ok, it is also the best bit of the song, but: wet) to the lyrics (‘I don’t want to spoil your pretty plan’ is grotesquely emo. And I really don’t consider my past self to be an emo in any way. And then the chorus – I’m basically just listing modes of transport. PICK ONE ) – all of these things lack any sort of punch whatsoever. It must be the most insipid dramatic walk-out of all time.

‘Ohhhh noooooo we’re fighting again. Ohhhhhh noooooooooooooooooooo. Ahhhh how annoyyyyyinnnggg. I’m gonna have to go to the train station, goodbye forever.’

‘Well where are you going?’

‘Not quite sure yet. Somewhere very very far awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy’

‘Wouldn’t the plane be more time efficient? Might also cost less, you know what trains are like these days. Especially if it’s a domestic flight.’

‘You’re probably right yes. Well either way I’m leaving Little Green Lane. I’m off to the plane station. GOODBYE FOREVER’

‘What’s Little Green Lane?’

(wiping a solitary tear from his uncertain eyes, our trembling hero shuffles awkwardly to the door, in a noncommittal sort of way)

Perhaps the most damning thing I can say about this song is that my most significant memories of it involve me trying to listen to it when out and about, and being frustrated that it was too quiet on my iPod. That’s basically it.

 

However, you know, it is a proper song. It goes verse chorus verse chorus in a pleasing way. If Adele sung it it would be passable. And, on a production level, it is a bit of a step up from most of the earlier tracks. The drumming is relatively tight and appropriate. I’m playing piano, which will slowly but surely take over from guitar as the dominant instrument in my music. It has a lead guitar part, which is quite a rarity in the discography (again, wet, but sweet. Or: sweet, therefore wet.) NOTE: I genuinely just noticed the guitar solo before the second verse for the first time since I started writing this. It took me roughly 5 listens. Incredibly appropriate blended solo, or completely ineffectual filler? You decide.

 

‘I’m leaving through the raaaiiiiinnnn.’

Course you are, you wet shit.

‘

The D ‘n’ D Song

~ tryingartist ~ 2 Comments

Another joke song, the ‘D’s stand for ‘Death and Destruction’. I think I found this amusing because the song features happy chords and a xylophone (or is it marimba? I can’t remember, it was a software instrument anyway, played through the laptop keyboard). Can a xylophone sound sad? A lack of research tells me no, no it can’t.

I’ll confess that while making this project I sigh a little whenever I get to a joke song like this. ‘Huhhhhhhhhhhhh’

I keep waiting for that great leap forward in musical prowess. Something to make the readers go ‘oh, he ain’t just a pretty font with mostly banal observations about himself, this guy actually has talent!’ Will we ever get there? Perhaps not, you may not like what I become.

In the meantime, if you love xylophones, easy happy harmonies, and punchlines that are frankly quite offensive when you listen to them again 8 years later, then you will simply love The D ‘n’ D Song.

The instrument parts are reasonably neatly put together, I’ll give it that. I have good memories of this song. At the time the harmonies sounded better than most I had done before, and the drumming is pretty much all in time. But joke songs don’t age well. Well, some do. But although the fact that it’s a joke shields it from some of the disdain I have for my earlier earnest efforts, it also dilutes the emotional pull I feel towards it. I listen and I’m like ‘there I go, being an inconsequential dick again’. At least when I tried to write proper music you can hear that bittersweet desperation of a recorded performance dying valiantly, over and over again. There’s something noble about it. I really am trying. The sarcastic sneer implied by this song ruins that for me. It’s still dying, just not nobly.

 

NB: I just tried for a full 4 minutes to find a sad xylophone piece. I tried everything, from typing ‘sad xylophone’ into YouTube, to typing ‘sad xylophone music’ into YouTube. I found absolutely nothing. This is the best I could find, so I think I’ve proven my point beyond doubt:

NB2: I stand corrected. Apparently it’s a marimba. Can marimbas sound sad? The jury’s out for now

I Don’t Get No Christmas Cards + COOL MAN

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I seem to have been going through a small distortion phase for a week or two.

These are two short and insignificant songs, each certainly made within a few hours. What do they mean to me? Not much.

COOL MAN was made with the guitarist from my school band, although strangely I played the main distorted chord sequence on guitar, and he just added those twinkly acoustic pluckings on top which don’t really work. I sing ‘yeah’ multiple times. It’s not really a song. The beginning is quite a lot like Just by Radiohead. I don’t think I really knew that song at the time – I listened to The Bends after most of the other Radiohead albums, and I was still a fledgling fanboy at this point. If you own a guitar, and your knowledge of chords is relatively basic, it’s almost impossible not to play something like COOL MAN or Just, given enough time.

This guitarist friend and I had much more success creating fake radio programmes together than we did with musical tidbits. Staying with a French family in Le Mans on a school trip, we holed ourselves up in the bedroom, too scared to socialise downstairs, and proceeded to record an hour long radio show about Pokémon. This was probably over five years after Pokémon stopped being a ‘thing’. (Not to say I didn’t indulge in it ever again, god no! There’s a time and place, and that time and place is after finals in 3rd year of university aged 23. The original gameboy games, by the way, not the actual card game. I’m not an idiot.)

We also made another infamous little recording called Fucking Paper Hats. The format is radio again, but it’s much shorter, and much, much more offensive. It has nothing to do with fucking, paper, or hats.

Like all good instrumentals, COOL MAN gets increasingly messy as it goes on, and then abruptly ends after the drumming gives up.

 

I Don’t Get No Christmas Cards is my second Christmas song which has very little to do with that special time of year. This one at least does include the word ‘Christmas’ in the lyrics, but that doesn’t really count when it’s a single line repeated over and over again. It strikes me that both my festive songs were written nowhere near December. And then it strikes me again that I constantly have songs like Last Christmas, All I Want For Christmas Is You, and the massive tune Once In Royal David’s City, stuck in my head all year round.

Am I obsessed with Christmas?

I mean, it is the most wonderful time of the year. But no, I don’t think I am. I think I’m just ‘obsessive’ in general. Give me a pen to flick with your fingers and I’ll give you a habit. Give me a song to sing, and I’ll give you a jingle for every second of the day. Give me the month of April, and you’re bound to get another song about Christmas.

From 1.22 I do a guitar solo of sorts, by sliding bar chords quickly around, paying no heed to such imprisoning contrivances like ‘key’, before my voice comes in once more with a fast drum fill. It actually works quite well, weirdly.

At one moment in the song I accidentally say ‘I get’ instead of ‘I don’t get’. There will not be a prize if you can find it, but you will have found it, and that will be enough.

 

One more thing: is it COOL MAN or COOL, MAN? I think because it’s written in capitals, I’ve never thought about it. You’ll have to ask the co-presenter of Fucking Paper Hats.

 

 

Smiling Cos He Made It

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I think I liked this song for ages because it was just after I’d learnt how to play major-7 chords on guitar, one of which begins the track, and I’d decided that was all pretty advanced and special.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t developed a problem with major-7 chords, some of my best chords are major-7s, but I have developed a problem with the song.

The verses are fine, especially the second one with its percussion on the ride and hi-hat. Lyrically I quite like it, although I distinctly remember thinking it was more profound than it sounds now. When you’re 16 the subject of social group dynamics and trying to get with girls is pretty intellectually stimulating. Actually I won’t sit here typing on my high horse – I still find those subjects very worthwhile topics of conversation. But the lyrics do come across a bit juvenile now.

Am I constantly underestimating my younger self? I think I might be. Not musically, no. These songs really are quite bad. But I think I was ‘aware’, mentally. I like to think my 16 year old self was adopting a sort of ironically self-referential yet wearily and dismissively distant yet resigned and trapped yet wise and knowing approach to these themes. It’s just so difficult to tell now. The impact of the sound on my ears doesn’t make me think: ‘this guy’s got it going on. He knows what’s what and he isn’t afraid to tell us’.

The title. I still come across this issue almost daily. The word is ‘because’, we’re all aware of that. But the lyrics are definitely ’cause’, which of course is an accepted abbreviated form. But it never looks right to me. I always read it as ’cause’ like ’cause and effect’. My whole life I have used ‘cos’ cos it reads more like a colloquial abbreviated form. Which, again, is ok, many people do that. In texts, in emails, on facebook. But it doesn’t look right in a title. There is the conundrum. I have preserved it nonetheless, for the sake of historical accuracy.
(It strikes me that this whole paragraph is the sort unlikely to make it past the 1st draft of a piece of writing. It’s definitely staying.)

Anyway, that chorus is meant to be a ‘big’ chorus, but it’s too messy for that. Every instrument goes in and out of time in amounts small enough to not sound like obvious mistakes, but large enough to prevent you from enjoying the song. The repeated line ‘he’s smiling cos he made it’ is too simple for the scene the rest of the song sets up. I want some sarcasm, or anguish, or tension, or any sort of emotion besides bland smugness. And then we get that awful bit at the end where I put some ‘character’ into the line by shortening the words to ‘he’s sm-li- c- he made it’, or whatever, and then it gets more bouncy, and I don’t normally take the Lord’s name in vain, but god it just doesn’t work, especially when I try to elaborate a bit on the melody and just sing some random higher notes in a strained uncertain sort of way.

The bridge is a random blues. It’s noteworthy because the blues does feature in a lot of my songs, but it does sound a bit like a fragment of a different song has been squashed in to eat up some seconds. Maybe it was. Anyway, all in all it’s a track that gets worse as it goes on.

Second on the playlist is a remix I did a bit less than a year later. ELECTRONIC MUSIC IS COMING, is the message, and what an important message that is, looking back on everything. Electronic sounds would begin to seep in from that moment onwards, although very gradually at first.

Musically, the remix has the advantage of being a year later, benefitting from slightly more knowledge on my part. It has the disadvantage of being an act of flogging a dead horse. 4/10.

 

 

Song For Tuesday

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While compiling this list, I have been forced to think a lot about my past. Not in a very serious way it’s true, but as I’ve listened to each song I’ve imagined myself during that time – what I was feeling, what I wanted in music and outside of it. This is the first song in the list that didn’t make me imagine a very small version of myself. I listened to this song and realised that in terms of the Trying Artist, my childhood was almost over.

That’s an inaccurate reaction of course – this song was probably written a few weeks either side of the songs next to it. But there’s something different about it. Maybe it’s the slightly increased degree of professionalism in the recording (this will undoubtedly not be consistent). Maybe it’s the lyrics, looking forward in a wistful way, that made me look backwards in the same tone. Maybe it’s that it took me longer to stop regarding this song as ‘good’, than it did with other ones. I continued listening to it a lot until I was a few years older, and so I associate it with being reasonably grown up.

Either way, I heard Song For Tuesday and immediately thought: ‘this is the start of the middle-era of my music’. To others that might sound insignificant, but for me, having these recorded moments of skill(?) and emotion, with their own memories attached, it means a lot. I break up my life into songs. I think: I was that age, I was with that girlfriend, I was recording that music. I have a terrible longterm memory, but I find I have nothing more evocative than my own music, and the music I was listening to at the time.

I think my first relationship ended shortly before the writing of this song. It was a serious relationship – at least we were adamant that it should be seen as such, and would shoot angry glances at any passers-by who we thought were being patronising (basically anyone who looked at us). It lasted over 2 years, but 13-15 is not the most serious of ages. The lyrics had nothing to do with how it ended, but I think my romantic situation (or lack of) may have contributed to the song’s yearning feel. I remember having one sustained thought for a few years afterwards: ‘She never got to hear any of my good songs.’ She of course was appropriately encouraging and admiring when she needed to be with all of the songs I showed her, but she never got to hear what they became. I guess I associated the progress of my music with my own life.

 

Song For Tuesday has nothing to do with Tuesday. I suppose I might have written it on that day of the week, but knowing me, I almost certainly wrote it on a Sunday and thought it would be funny to just pick the wrong day. Still laughing after all these years…

I think the song was a satirical tribute to the way my mind works – i.e. I find it very hard to make my mind up. The biggest clue I have is that it was saved in an album I had made on iTunes called ‘Make Up Your Fucking Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnd’. That, and the climax of the song: ‘I’m gonna make up my mind’. I’m pretty sure I was clever enough at the time to deliberately repeat the phrase in the first verse ‘I’m gonna fly’ to provoke increasing doubt. That or I just needed enough words to complete the verse.

As usual though, we get a few lyrics that simply don’t make sense. The first two lines mean absolutely nothing in the context of the song. I probably couldn’t decide what I wanted it to be about.

Wistful:

You’re Not Alone

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A band song, the chords written by the guitarist and bassist, the melody and words written by me. But that’s not important right now. What is important are the lines in the second verse:

‘Now I know that you say you’re right
But let me tell you,
I’ve seen fakers lie better
Than you could tell the truth.

I know what it’s like to be alone
And I’m not going back.’

Everything about those lyrics grates on me, right down to the ‘but let me tell you’. The most immediately annoying thing is obviously the naivety/authenticity issue. Some 15 year old moaning about how he has plumbed the depths of loneliness and despair doesn’t suggest the emotional impact of Juliette waking up to find Romeo dead beside her. Let’s also not forget that the singer sings these lines to someone he is clearly in a serious relationship with now. So the loneliness could be assumed to have happened 2/3 years earlier. The memory he is alluding to might well have been when he lost his mum in the supermarket for ten minutes and was trapped in a dark forest of striding strangers’ legs.

But maybe you’re a postmodern reader and you subscribe to the Death of the Author. Maybe you don’t think the age of the writer makes any difference – it’s the words themselves that matter. Well, I mean first up, there isn’t really anything poetic about those lines is there? But no matter, lyrics don’t have to be abstract or complex, or even rhyme. Take Lorraine Ellison’s chorus:

‘Stay with me baby
Please stay with me baby
Oh, stay with me baby
I can’t go on’

These lyrics make up one of the most powerful choruses of all time, because the music and the vocal performance lifts them. This is the difference between lyrics and poetry – music has the ability to transform phrases we might class as cliché into powerful, profound statements. But I’m not fully, or even at all, convinced that the musical performance of my lyrics in ‘You’re Not Alone’ has done anything except make them just slightly worse.

Then there’s a predictable consistency issue, as with pretty much every song I’ve written about so far. On first listen, it’s easy to be fooled into thinking that ‘You’re Not Alone’ contains a series of well-matched verses that all relate to a central, consolatory message.

In fact, listen again (if you can manage it), and you’ll find that there are three distinct shades to the ‘You’re Not Alone’ message, none of which makes sense together.

  1. (a) Your basic, ‘you’re not alone, I’m here with you’ message. This narrative arc features the song’s best line: ‘Turn the light on inside, you can’t see in the dark’, and it’s basically what you think the song is about if you aren’t concentrating, mainly because of its title.

(b) But even within this first narrative, there is a second strain which succinctly discredits part 1 with a couple of choice phrases:

‘I know that you aren’t used
To this kind of advice
From someone on the street’

Actually coming in the first verse, those lines tell us that the singer is a stranger to the addressee of the song, which is completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the lyrics, in particular with narrative 2:

2. These are the lyrics quoted at the top of this post. They essentially read ‘You are lying. Please don’t leave me.’ Suddenly the situation is reversed in two ways: the characters do know each other very well, and it’s actually the singer who might be alone.

3. Finally, we have a resigned message about consolatory messages in general.

‘Well you’re not what you wanted to be,
But let’s just leave that all behind.
When there’s nothing left to shout for,
People tell you: ‘At least you’ve got your health’

So, it’s a song about a person consoling someone else or being consoled or being dumped or not liking being consoled or consoling in the first place.

We in the band liked this song a lot, once upon a time. We never played it live much because we thought it was too slow/ we couldn’t play it very well. But we’d show it to people. ‘Listen to this, what do you think? It’s a song we wrote about taxis and leading a healthy lifestyle’

RABBITS IN THE RAIN

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My sister’s friend heard me playing guitar once and asked me to write her a song. I said ok give me a minute, and walked off. She laughed, I laughed, we all laughed. 2 days later I came back to her with RABBITS IN THE RAIN. Title in capitals, presumably to add a bit of gravitas to a theme I was worried people might treat with too much levity.

A tragedy in bunny’s clothing, this is a song about the voracious and perverse appetite of consumerism, the desperate struggle of the oppressed against systemic oppressive forces, and rabbits dancing around having a lovely time when it’s a bit wet.

That last part of the theme is covered succinctly but repeatedly in the choruses. I obviously deemed ‘rabbits in the rain’ description enough to translate the complex, multi-layered visions I’m sure I was having at the time. And I was right. Rabbits are so heavily connotative in our society that merely mentioning them over a couple of happy chords is enough to suggest a cute scene, maybe springtime, bucolic splendour, nature running its course, a world untouched by evil. The rain is a slight spanner though. Are they happy in the rain? Is it Bambi Little April Showers, or is it a darkening foreboding storm?

Regardless, we all know what happens in Bambi.

Boom, enter the minor chord, and the verse begins. It starts off harmlessly enough:

‘The rabbit has got his lettuce
And no one will take it from him
You don’t want to fight a rabbit
When it’s got its lettuce’

But in here are the corrosive seeds of greed, the same greed that will lead to Billy the Rabbit stealing from Old Farmer Jack. The same greed that will cause Billy’s death.

What can a rabbit do? His land encroached on by the constantly increasing consumption of humanity, a modern day rabbit is forced to steal in order to survive. Do you think Billy was raised to be a thief? No, Sofia the Rabbit was a rabbit of principle and dignity. But she too had to steal, eventually. And Billy sees no moral dilemma in taking back from those who ruined his last 4 homes, killed half of his friends, and left many more starving. Old Farmer Jack deserves what he’s got coming to him, Billy believes.

Trouble:

‘Old Farmer Jack
Has come out with his gun.
Run, Rabbits, run,
You don’t want Farmer Jack to get you’

And here we get the unstoppable force of the system crashing against those who would attempt to disrupt it. What is a warren of rabbits to a single human with a gun? Lettuce crumbs dropping from their panicked hungry mouths, they scatter. What started off as an act of conscious collective rebellion, a small victory in a world of grinding losses, becomes a free-for-all of selfish chaos, as rabbits clamber over each other to save their own skin. This is how the system wins. It breaks spirits. It reduces oppressed beings to their most basic and dangerous drive: to survive. In this state, even a generous, compassionate, and cute rabbit like Billy begins to display the same pernicious qualities found in the oppressors he so loathes.

Today, Billy doesn’t even get the chance to save himself. Perhaps served on a plate, with a side of the lettuce he had wanted. Maybe just discarded with the disdain Farmer Jack reserves for beings he decides are worth less than himself.

‘The rabbits were so afraid
Nowhere to go
And Billy was taken down
He was too slow’

 

 

 

Sit Back And Relax

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Ergh, it’s just so dreary. The tune, I mean. ‘All the things you saiiiiiiiddddd’. The rest of the song is very upbeat and enthusiastic. We played it in the band, and it was maybe my first experience of exterior pressures dictating music choices, in that we kept playing it for ages. Teenager audiences love that bounce. Teenager audiences love that pause and then the sarcastic ‘honey’. At least we thought they did. Listening to it now it’s just so drab, I think. Drab and dreary.

I hate the sound of the guitar, it’s too shiny clean. But not like a brand new car, more like a clean tin. Imagine you’ve washed out the baked beans, and you’re just gazing into that tin.

The bridge, perhaps the best part, is stolen from an earlier song. I’m not judging, I mean if you think this one is bad try that one. Thank god the section was rescued from the wreckage. But it’s a bit like being rescued from your ruined house, and then being blamed for it having burned down, and then being left in the street, and you don’t like the street anymore, it being the blackened site of your ex-house.

It makes me feel weird, remembering myself turn my head to the left, sat at the drum kit in some pub, to drawl out the word ‘honey’. I think I used to think I was cool when I did that. I probably was, I guess. People in bands are cool. People in audiences don’t always judge as harshly as your future patronising self. Sometimes I would get compliments, having stepped down from the stage.

I just don’t like this song. I also think I can remember my bandmates not really liking it either. Like they knew my songwriting wasn’t really up to scratch, like they were plotting secretly. Do I remember some dispirited bass playing coming from the corner during rehearsals? I might do. The guitarist probably liked it. He liked playing bouncy guitar. He would bounce a bit on stage, with an extremely affable wide smile across his face at all times.

Anyway, I chose that picture because behind the lazy-teenager veneer of these lyrics is this strange paranoia, and the ominous spectre of capitalism:

“What’s wrong with my life?
I keep on counting all the days ahead”

This could be the lament of an office drone, tired of his daily grind. You might expect some lyrics about breaking free and focusing on real happiness, not ambition. But no! Actually he turns out to be a reluctant layabout, who gets nothing but snide judgment from his listener:

“What’s wrong with your life?
Well, you don’t have any money.
Maybe that’s because you made the decision
Not to work, honey.”

Such a prick! Why was I on the wrong side??