William McCarthy - Ballad for the Unemployed
In Our Headphones
KEXP
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2020
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
William McCarthy - "Ballad for the Unemployed," a 2020 self-released single.
As the frontman for Pela and Augustines, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter William McCarthy has never shied away from difficult topics. (Augustine's 2011 album Rise Ye Sunken Ships was influenced by the deaths of his mother and brother.)
As a solo artist, McCarthy continues to explore darker subjects in his music, like on today's featured track “Ballad for the Unemployed.“
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And the Tony Robbins bounded for the unemployed. You're a motivational speaker, right? So I decide to write you in the middle of the night. |
| 0:27.0 | Tony Robbins, Zippeo looking for. |
| 0:30.0 | Because I was once a rushing river, now I'm a sliver staring out a floor. |
| 0:34.0 | I got left standing in God's taillights. |
| 0:37.0 | Just caught between some of my country's wrongs and rights. |
| 0:41.0 | Just a long line of almost babies and mites. |
| 0:44.0 | So greetings from the hovel of a boat, |
| 0:46.0 | under the decks of a mighty dream, and a scream I walked home, |
| 0:50.0 | sleepwalking when I lost my job again. |
| 0:55.0 | And round and round we go and then I saw your face on the TV screen. |
| 1:07.0 | Thought maybe we could talk just you and me. |
| 1:10.0 | See the countries all turned out so impossible. |
| 1:13.0 | A dream like a bottle rocket to the sky. |
| 1:16.0 | Like a junk yon hound barking at a lonely summer night. |
| 1:19.0 | Tony, I feel my dreams have all drowned in lead. |
| 1:23.6 | All drown in lead. All drowning in lead. |
| 1:26.0 | So welcome to my bed where I lay my heavy head. |
| 1:29.1 | And I bet on imaginary horses in my dreams. |
| 1:32.2 | But Tony, I always come last place it seems. |
| 1:36.0 | No procession, no confetti, no trace of my effort to be somebody. |
| 1:40.0 | No flash of cameras, no metal, no awards, no parades, no health insurance, no nothing, I'm afraid. |
| 1:46.0 | I'm in a system that just doesn't care. |
... |
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