Is our music low or high?
What do the lyrics signify?
My agency commodified
Let's let the dead white guys decide

A path of least resistance overblown as tension
Irony undetected with every self-expression
If Adorno was here then he'd probably say
The middle finger that lingers and so proudly displayed
To the world and to yourselves
Meat market livestock overstocking retail counter shelves

Could we invoke some common sense?
And realize it's all been spent
Counterhegemonic pretense
The reason Johnny can't dissent

Pyrotechnics and spectacle, white and heterosexual
They all say, "slit your wrists with your credit card, baby!"
Essentializing oppression and heterogendered desire
A worn out rebel impression, waving the capitalist flag
Rock stars are businessmen in drag
So let's make like Great White and Billy Joel and say, "we didn't start the fire!”

C-O-N-S-U-M-E

We can shop if we want to
We can leave our friends behind
'Cause if friends don't shop, and if they don't drop
Then we'll just kill some time
I say, we can shop where we want to
Waiting single file in line
And we can act like we searched all over the world
When we really found it online
We can shop
Consume!

Now wait a minute…I don't buy that shit

A parody without a cause
Other than blurring the facade
A Kaufmann-esque performance flaw
Choosing rupture over applause

A stranger in a strange land with so many different contexts
What I don't understand I counter with hidden transcripts
Can't afford a sense of humor when too broke to sell out
So like a Frank Zappa riff, I'm gonna freak the fuck out
Is this resistance or just a contradiction I can't hide?
My politics embracing our commercial suicide

This song has more hooks than cowbell, my gaze self-reflective
I've got no feminine side but a feminist perspective
Should I not play the race card in such colorblind times
When you paint blackface on those who try to white out the lines
Pop goes the culture, everything is so crass
My tongue's so lodged in my cheek that I can taste my own ass
So read between every word, negotiate every sound
This is music as image, not the other way around

My rebel yell is strained
Yelling no no more
I used to have a brain
Well, no no more
My blue balls in such pain
I guess less is more
Pants are too tight again
Please no no more—pop goes the culture

Are you ready to pop?
If this music to rock to?
This is music to shop to
Are we so fucking worthless
Under such a spell
It takes a proof of purchase
To define ourselves?
Another weapon of the weak
So here's your fucking receipt…

The check's in the mail, agency squeezed and extracted
Undermined with each sale while being sincerely packaged
But if we're passed off as passive, who gets to make that decision?
Music meant for the masses, no matter why it was written
You can't patent meaning no matter how corporate frames it
My headphones empower while you see disengagement
I can't tell you what to find, but I find that you should tell
A culture being redefined by what we purchase and sell

I do know I'm not the only one
To disengage and to extort
I do know I'm not the only one
To sell myself so very short

I do know I'm not the only one
To make meaning hand over fist
I do know I'm not the only one
To redefine and to resist

© 2007 Walter Campbell/NVS Music, all rights reserved.