| Failure – Wonderful Life Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This song is ultimately about modern life and it's apparent emptiness, like many of the songs in the alternative scene it came from. Each verse repeats what "it's not about." In each one he lists an aspect of modern life, first gorey newspaper headlines, then a boring commute to and from work, then prescription drugs and psychiatry. All of these things consume the time of a decent, well-off person living the American Dream (of course you have to remember when this album was current the middle class in America was huge and seemingly everyone was rich). These are all things that obviously shouldn't be a part of a "wonderful life," but they were (and still are) major parts of modern culture, kind of unintended consequences. The chorus is more of the same - He's riding modern amenities like satellites and bullet trains to the American Dream. Later he's sleeping in the softest beds, eating whenever he feels like it and never needing another person for anything at all. The song describes your average American, watching the news about missing and slain children, spending all their time at work or commuting to and from it, staying in a daily grind of a routine, then dealing with all the psychological problems that causes with drugs, traveling closer and closer to a sarcastically "wonderful life." In the demo version released on Essentials, as mentioned many of the lyrics are slightly different, although mostly to the same overall effect. The most notable difference is at the very end of the last verse: after a couple of lines about abortion (a huge issue in the early 90s) he ends the song telling us what "it" is actually about: "It ain't about any front page crap It's all about the urge in your lap" |
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