The Ballad of the Aging Folk Singer Video (MV)

The folksinger is old
At the tail end of his career
Sometimes he hits a bad note
That is painful to the ear
And often between songs he'll ramble incoherently
It's not much different from his lyrics
Where you don't know what he means

When he first started out on the folk scene
His sets usually closed the bar
Today his appearances thankfully end
At a much more reasonable hour
His audience has grown old with him
So this suits us just fine
We don't want to be up at 2am
We want to be in bed by nine

Sometimes he'll repeat a verse
That seconds ago he sang
But we don't mind that much because
It keeps him longer on the stage
No, nobody minds any of his quirks
He's built up decades of goodwill
So even though he's no longer a young vagabond
The concert halls stay filled

There's only one thing that he does
That fills us with rage
It's an unforgivable crime
That has nothing to do with his age
He released an album in the 70s
In an attempt to boost his sales
It was an LP full of disco songs
Needless to say, it failed

So if he dusts off one of these disco tunes
And starts to play it at a show
Nearly everyone takes a restroom break
Whether or not they have to go
At the time the disco album was released
His fans felt like they'd been betrayed
Why'd he turn to writing disco songs
After all of the classic folk tunes he made

But when the next album came out
Our artist had course corrected
It was a back to basics acoustic guitar album
And we no longer felt rejected
No one's ever asked for one of those disco songs
None get shouted out as a request
So you can understand how much it baffles us
When he adds one to his set list

Oh, when we see him take off his guitar
And walk over to an electric keyboard
We let out a collective groan
Cause we know what it's up there for
None of the great poet's lyrics from those songs
Have left anyone any wiser
They're just tunes about quaaludes and dancing
Accompanied by a synthesizer
Mama, they're just songs about quaaludes and dancing
Accompanied by a synthesizer

There was one hippie critic
Who gave the album a good review
But the article was written on April first
And it turned out to be an April fools
He's written over 600 songs
So he's got a lot to choose from
And everyone wishes he'd forget
The 10 songs from that disco album

And as he said in one of my favorite songs
You're either the driver, or you're the road
I've been thinking about that for forty years
What he meant by that
Oh, I'll never know

Maybe he's saying something about life
Either your driving or you're driven on
Who knows?
Who cares?

While he keeps going out there
We mostly enjoy him til he's done

Well keep fillin' those concert halls
And avoiding those disco songs
Those horrible disco songs

Man, that restroom line is long
Oh mama, that restroom line is long
Oh mama, that restroom line is long
Oh mama, that restroom line is long