Better Days

I've been thinking about these lyrics for a while now. They seemed too simple, too...spoken to be meant word for word, spoken by the author. Then I saw the music video for the song. I'd say the song is meant to tell how even the worst people in history (Hitler, Stalin, Attila, etc.) always believed that they were doing the "right thing", although defined by themselves or whatever they believed in. Maybe they believed that their way was the best way to happiness, and in some cases, the only way one should live. Hitler believed that his wars were holy wars that forever would cleanse the world of illness and disability - a utopia, of course, but he still believed in it. The famed crusades; they believed that by spreading the same religion across the world, no people would ever find themselves in conflict with others again.

Anyway, that's my view. I'd love to hear others, so please comment!

I liked LidoTRK's comment from 9 years ago, pointing out the sincerely utopian asprirations of history's most egregious villains, Hitler, et al., and that they all belieived they were actually doing good. It's such an absurdly simple and obvious fact that seems to rarely be acknowledged. That was an interesting, complimentary angle on this song that had never quite occurred to me before

They (user LidoTRK) mentioned the lyrics seemed stilted or hollow-sounding, until they stumbled upon the cold war-era track's jarring dystopian music video. The way to best appreciate Davies' commentary here is to abandon the literal interpretation in favor of an ironic reading.

I've come to think of "Better Days" as devastating (and still extremely relevant) indictment of the two-party system in the United States, and the duplicitous character of its campaign politics in particular. This album was recorded circa the 1984 US Presidential election; the outro features speech snippets from Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, and their respective running mates, assembled into sound collage that seems to bitterly mock the over-the-top, almost gloating manner in which politicians compete with one another to seduce the impressionable masses.

In the context of the political sound collage fadeout, the satirical nature of Rick Davies' lyrics is pretty indisputable. It's not the first time Davies turned his attention to this sort of heady subject matter; perhaps Reagan, Mondale, et al. are the"men of lust, greed and glory" who are summoned up in "Crime of the Century" ten years prior.

It's unfortunate that this album has been relatively ignored, in comparison to its abysmal predecessor, "Famous Last Words."Just listen to "Better Days" and then go watch the video for "My Kind of Lady." Davies proved his own talents admirably here in the absence of Hodgson, who, despite subsequently pushing a narrative that he, himself, basically "was" Supertramp, has not written anything this engaging since his departure prior to "Brother Where You Bound." I think the facts here speak for themselves -- the whole of the Davies/Hodgson joint collaboration was simply a greater and grander phenomenon than the sum of its part, in any case. For most of their career as a band, the mere presence of one another propelled both men to exceed themselves and coax their best possible work onto tape. So it seems misguided to form factions based on "loyalty" to one or the other, as least as misguided as dismissing "Brother Where You Bound" as not a "real" Supertramp record simply due to the lineup change. Rick holds it together and lays it down right on this one, just wish I could say the same of any subsequent studio albums (the live ones are pretty good.)