From the recording You're Welcome, With Love
Lyrics
Settle Down!
Adam Smith’s daughter plays on Broadway / In purple and pink / Cartoon cleavage and a cotton candy wink / A not-so-invisible hand pays her rent / She’s a symbol of brand / And that’s money well spent! // It’s the social symphony! / Penetrating all we see is Smith’s unfurling shaft of greed / As it rapes “guys and dolls” in "our town" / So flee into the Hudson River moonlight /// North and west are twinkletowns / One strung along rails / We’ll be safe out there / Maybe even live off of the grid We’ll settle down! Where they’ve got a name for the things that they like / And they like all the things / With the names that they know very well / Soon we’ll believe in the same things / Or at least have the decency / Not to say the things that we mean // It’s the social symphony! / Stanley drove another wedge into the consecrated hedge / As he went on and on / About the continental drift from Mexico to "our town" // Oh, such fury its time we all just settle down! ◢ Let’s settle down! ◣ It’s the social symphony! / Stanley drove another nail into this cautionary tale / So we moved on and out / To find a simple life with some communal romance // Oh, such hurry to find a place to settle down! ◢ ◣ So, out of the outskirts and into the exurbs / The synthetic veneer / That seals the surface of America’s frontier / We’re pirates of sorts, swabbing new wooden decks / but life’s so sanitized in our super-sized home built on spec // It’s the social symphony! / The gated neighborhood with walls that’s near the fine suburban mall / That transplants “guys and dolls” / As neutered crops in sterile soil once called prime farmland /// Up and out are twinklelights / One scattered in the night / Is it safe out there? ■