We Want Mine

Hmmm. That the lyrics cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions says something interesting about the actual content of this song. I won't try to wrap my head around that! Instead, I will say what I originally came here to say: this is a marvelous song with a political bent to it... which is not something you can too often say: that a song is both marvelous and political. And economic to boot. In a nutshell it's about big capitalistic countries (I wonder which one the author had in mind??) exploiting little countries for their resources and them leaving them high and dry when the resources run out. Of course, my dry recitation of what this song means does not do justice to the song, which succeeds in using rock and roll angst, and pseudo-mirth, to punctuate the song. And the words manage to get the point across in emotional, personal terms, all encapsulated in the caustic refrain (and I quote at the risk of stepping on the toes of the copyright cronies): "We don't want your money, we want mine." Great song, a truly great song.

The song is a direct hit at their record label Lifesong (to which the band referred as "Lifelong"), and the less-than-profitable relationship they had. The band's debut was a contender for record-of-the-year in Rolling Stone (maybe it won, I don't remember) in 1975, but because the label didn't promote the record properly and because their distribution network was incompetent, it went more or less nowhere. Hence the lyrics above, which brilliantly fit the smart-ass tone the band set elsewhere.