Song lyrics Trying out something new today that I’m pretty pumped about. For lack of finding anything remotely cool to call it, I’m going with ‘Song Diary.’ I decided to go through one of my songs, You Can’t Win Them All, and break down the song lyrics. Pretty sure there’s not much about this song that is hard to figure out, you probably already get it by the title. But, as a songwriter, I’d like to share my craft. Sometimes we could care less about lyrics and where they come from, sometimes they’re intriguing. Either way, today I’ll contextualize the song into the MidLife Crisis. Enjoy! By the way this is my first single and it will be released on February 13.
Also, sorry Gramma, there are a couple naughty words in here.
Getting older, getting wiser. Not a MidLife Crisis. This, of course, will be how a lot of people might describe the time period in their life between, say 35 and 50. They’re absolutely right. I’m writing about the MidLife Crisis fully aware that it is not necessarily a crisis at all. In fact, this time in our lives really I think gets a bad rap using the term “crisis.” As I alluded to in Part 2, it can be been called many things, the “MidLife Malaise” is one of my favorites. No one here at MF’d is saying that everyone goes into a crisis mode. We’re not saying that everyone’s life changes course. We’re continuing to use that term precisely to contribute to redefining what it means and guiding our readers to more information about it.
So, getting older, figuring it out, re-assessing, seeing things in a different way, finding meaning, changing values. All of these phrases really describe the same things that Daniel Levinson breaks down in his book, Season’s of a Man’s Life. Looking at the structures in our lives, and making big or small changes to them based on the latest evaluation of them. A more fun way of describing this process, in my mind would be to say… “emptying out one’s bag of fucks-to-give.” I’ll go ahead and share with you three examples, clearly hypothetical, selected at random, with no assumed correlation to anyone’s real life:
Why do I care so much about my job? The money is really the only thing that has any value at the end of the day. Any sense of accomplishment has long been realized.
Dating sucks, why do I keep doing it? To get laid? Because the world says I should?
Man I used to really like watching NFL football. Seems like recently, the value of the NFL has been so diluted by billionaire assholes protecting what they feel is ‘their’ amazing bullshit team’s value. Burying super scary head injury disease. Tyreek Hill. And insurance commercials. More insurance commercials. Want to know what industry rips off people so much that they can afford to hire the most expensive celebrity spokespersons and buy the most expensive ad space on TV EVERY WEEK??? Watch the NFL. Just send your money somewhere every month for the opportunity to pay $500, or even $1000 FIRST, if something happens. Does that make you mad? OK here is a commercial with your local agent, your hometown local guy and gal. The modern day coal miner/farmer blue collar endorser. Your local insurance agent. My friend and I share the same agent. My friend saw him at the club one time quite drunk. He was very appreciative of my friend’s business. He drives a German car. Need I say more?
So none of these ideas really fits a stereotypical MidLife crisis subject matter. Jobs, sure. Dating? The NFL? Who cares, really. Just examples of how our perspective can change on some of the more typical stuff we fill our daily lives with.
That brings me to this week’s theme. A song diary. As no one in Nashville knows, I’m a songwriter, and a lot of the things I’ve been writing about for the past 5 to 10 years are related to the malaise.
This song falls into my favorite phase of the MidLife Crisis; namely Acceptance. Obviously we are all familiar with the term, but as I re-read through my Levinson book report, I find no less than five references to the idea of acceptance: The death of the “symbolic youthful hero,” inevitable mortality, accepting our faults and who we are, once we let go of that youthful hero. The list goes on, I'm sure you have your own. After we go through this long process of evaluating all the different structures of adult life, we eventually ‘pivot,’ in some way or another and, however the dust settles, eventually we come to terms with it. Dare I say, contentment, happiness, a soothing calm, with the world around us settles back in. We have learned hard truths about life. They no longer piss us off. They might agitate us from time to time, like any grumpy old person does, but we accept them.
You can’t win them all follows the traditional song structure including verses, a pre-chorus, a chorus, and a bridge. I’m grouping the verses and associated pre-chorus(es) here because they happen to go together in this song, which isn’t always true. Anyway, they are miniature stories of some of life’s failures. Not the big ones like marriage or love lost or death. Part of the point here is that I've selected scenarios that are common, that we all might think could be kind of sad or disappointing. 1) Little league baseball/studying in school 2) Your mundane office job. 3) Buying a house. This is why I’ve selected these stories as being related to our MidLife crisis. Because these are exactly the kind of things that one might no longer really care about as much as they used to. The are fucks-to-give that have tumbled out of satchel, courtesy of our re-evaluation of life that is the MidLife crisis.
Verse 1:
You couldn’t crack the lineup, on your little league team
You got stood up on your date with the homecoming queen
Pre-Chorus 1:
Stayed up all night studying, all you managed was a C
A wise man once said, “C’s get degrees.”
Pretty self-explanatory...
Verse 2:
Bought your new crush flowers, on her birthday
When you jumped on her front porch, (you saw) there were already two bouquets
Pre-Chorus 2:
Finally got promoted, after years of office drama
Instead of a raise, you got a gift card to Benihana (not bad)
After introducing these mini stories, we get to the punchline, our chorus, which is repeated after all of these Verse/Pre-Chorus stanzas. I probably don’t have to tell you that the chorus is reminding us that winning or losing at any one of these things doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. In addition, my favorite phrase, “enjoy the race for second place,” is really synonymous with the old adage “it’s not the destination, but the journey.” Which, of course, is also what people say to make themselves feel better when shit goes wrong. When I talk about this song on stage, I refer to the “winning” culture we have in our country from sports to Hollywood award shows to the dearth of “Top 5 List of Everything” we have to consume every day on our clickbait phones. Now, don’t get me wrong, wanting to win is a great thing. Incentivizing human beings is what drives our religion of capitalism. We need goals and we need to be rewarded when we meet our goals. Meritocracy is indeed king. Sales bonuses mean more sales are generated. Contract years in pro sports is a real phenomenon. But let’s back off a little from the aggressive sneaker ad campaign bullshit about worshipping winning. This song is for the rest of you.
Chorus:
you can’t win them all
get used to winning nothing
enjoy the race for second place
‘cause you can’t win them all
The bridge, it’s a change of pace, it's a little bit of a break. Like the chorus, it’s not a story, it’s more direct. Kind of another version of the same message. Simply saying in another way what the chorus is already saying. It’s lonely at the top. Why chase that ‘grass that is always greener?’ Also here is an obvious nod to the great Garth Brooks and his forever hit Friends in Low Places.
Bridge:
Who wants to win them all?
They say it’s lonely at the top
Grass is always greener,
Have to know just when to stop
I’ve got my friends in low places
We don’t care what’s hangin’ in your trophy cases.
Bag of fucks-to-give is decidedly empty!!
OK! What do you think? Was this fun? Send me an email, let me know. I’ll be sending you, my email subscribers, an advanced link to the single by the end of the week!!!!
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