I wrote the verse to this song at a different tempo, so it had a similar but more boppy cadence. Sadly, I realized that it sounded way too similar to a song “Stick Up” by Grandson, so I changed the tempo and riff. This one is really fun to sing. It's simple and angry, and I really love the way the lyrics sound in the verses.

Fox News will tell you that the ones that you should fear

Are people crossing borders, not the Proud Boys who are here

They tell that the immigrants are bringing doom and gloom

But the real threat to America is sitting in the board room

Complain about inflation

Well blame the corporations

Price manipulation

Just daily operations

You can’t pay your bills

Cause wall street kills

And now you learned your lesson

And now your learned your lesson,

no dreams left in America

Only golden parachutes for the rich in America

The stock market’s crashing cause it’s all a fucking game

the thing about recession is we don’t feel it the same

The wealthy and the privileged are still buying on a whim

While single parents struggle how to feed their fucking kids

With no safety net

It’s time to place our bets

Do we eat the rich?

Or just off with their heads?

You can’t pay your bills

Cause wall street kills

And now you learned your lesson

And now your learned your lesson 

Background: I wanted to have a simple pop pink song using the good old radio friendly 4-chord progression. Once I got the structure down the lyrics came together really quickly. I like having an upbeat sensibility to the song, while also have what I think are really powerful lyrics. I think my favorites are the second verse with the Green Day reference. It also gives me the chance to name whoever is pissing me off when we play it live (here's a hint: they usually belong to the GOP).

They took them from their homes

created people they could own

and we can never take that back

never take it back

they tore families apart

they started years of racist harm

and we can’t escape our past

can’t escape our past

you can’t erase this part of history

you can’t pretend like it’s a mystery

the fruits of your American dream

the seeds were planted back in 1619

we’ve gone from slave owners who killed 

to racists on the hill 

fuck their white supremacy

do you know your enemy?

they know that change is getting close

so they suppress the right to vote

they want Jim Crow here to stay

let’s lock these fucks away

you can’t erase this part of history

you can’t pretend like it’s a mystery

the fruits of your American dream

the seeds were planted back in 1619

the seeds were planted back in 1619

we made a deal with the devil back in 1619

Background: This is the first Wednesday Demonstration song that I wrote. I came up with the verse riff in my head back in 2021 and was trying to figure out how to build a song around it. Reflecting a year after George Floyd's murder and the police response to protests across the country, I decided to build the song around police violence. The verse yrics came pretty easily, and I think they are powerful and flow well. I struggled with the chorus for a while in terms of what to sing. I knew I wanted to yell something and then when I thought about everything as a waking nightmare, it just clicked. Then when I finally got my USB interface and started to record, I wanted this to be the first one. Anyone who has seen us knows we use this as our closing song now, but when I played my first WD show acoustically and also with a live band, this was third in the set.

8 minutes 46 seconds ends a lifetime

ACAB cops killing people for some small crimes

History has made these wounds and now they’re getting deeper

Blue lives, blue cars on patrol like the reaper

I can’t believe that I’m awake 

open your eyes

modern day slave patrols hunting freedom singers

nazi fucks with badges and some itchy trigger fingers

now the armys at our door treating us like insurgents

law and order, white supremacy, see this is the convergence

I can’t believe that I’m awake 

open your eyes