Turn It Off
Cable news is constant, maddening, addicting, and upsetting, not only because of the news companies, but because there is just so much to get upset about.
Music by Michael Gould
Lyrics by Michael Gould & Rob Kabus
Rap Lyrics by Dublin
THE PLAYERS
Michael Gould — keyboards, vocals
Dave (Dublin) Schwirtz — vocals, rap
Jim McManus — bass
Phil McGee — guitar
THE COMMENTARY
LYRICS
sunrise on a new morality
lying’s okay, tax evasion’s smart
a new day for an old reality
money has no heart
saudi princes, porn stars, taliban
record losses and record rains
mass indictments, marching immigrants
russian troll campaigns
it’s unrelenting
constant cable
a soundbite meme machine
the pundits venting
no one is able to
tear themselves away from their sorry screen
white wears crimson and blood flows indigo
the swamp’s alive and the pork is green
black is blue and it’s a sin to go
to school with no vaccine
roll back the regs
we deny the science
while the planet burns
the Congress begs
treasury defiance
on the tax returns
they wanna
roll back the clock
returning to a time that
really wasn’t great
here’s some future shock
we’re sliding into the ocean
as we seal our fate
testing one two
let your bubble run you
and the channel that you run through
it’ll block out and numb you
i’ve seen paranoid fetish, amphetamines
clearing evergreens
lies about everything
it’s a new low
that we’ve never seen
bad day? you think we’ve hit the brink?
whoops! with the kitchen sink?
you can paint that kitchen pink but you can’t hide
the elephant in the room is upside down
breaking news is breaking out
like a real bad case of an std
initial symptoms fear and doubt
what am I doing
watching, passive
drowning in my chair
the story’s brewing
this is massive
here we go again with a thought and prayer
sunrise on the new tonality
you’re so cute when you’re being mean
a new day for an old brutality
the needy are so obscene
fox in the hen house, hawks in the war room
shocks every day in the toxic sea
wall street, borders, me too, your womb
it’s gonna be the death of me
i’ve got to turn off my tv
turn off my tv
turn off my tv
turn it off
Behind
The Song
Ok, I admit it. I'm a news junkie, and in the era of Trump...
...every day was a new outrage. I wrote the music for this song first, thinking it would be an instrumental, then worked up a lyric, and it turned out political. Rob Kabus and I got together and he added some brilliance to it fixing problems that had me stuck. I had a solo built in, but talked to Dublin and challenged him to write a rap instead of an instrumental solo, which he did, equally brilliantly. Then I captured and collaged the news clips you hear at the beginning.
This points out the difficulty in writing anything political. News is ‘new’ and gets old very quickly and becomes supplanted with new news. But I offer this as a tribute to the time, when ‘the elephant in the room is upside down; breaking news is breaking out like a real bad case of an STD, initial symptoms; fear and doubt.’
The only cure is to turn it off.
