My words are not written for me to make a profit
Nor do I profess to be a spiritual prophet
I just want a gallery to display what I create
Just a place where no one's counting up the gate

You have confused God with your Almighty Dollar
And sold your soul for some artificial power
Inside you're already equipped with all that you need
I won't be bought 'cos I've closed my eyes to the beauty of greed

Fools will compare music of yesterday and today
Technology can't make up for words without a way
If a song's natural strength is not strong enough
Why soften it by stuffing padding in the fluff?

I hear a lot of slick production on the radio
I really think the rock has gotten out of control
I have seen the artists struggling in smoke filled bars
And now in my visions I can see beyond the stars

All I ever hear these days are sopped-up smoothie tunes
Rising up the charts as fast as full hot air balloons
Even if you don't hear music from my point of view
Stop polishing the rock, don't let it roll over you

You're making lots of dollars but you're not making any sense
Your smoothie tunes lack the passion that makes a song intense
Believe the words you sing or the song is finished from the start
Stop writing from your wallet, let it flow from in your heart

Put some soul behind your roll and find the spirit that you lack
Once it's sold you can't buy it back even with your endless stack
In spite of all you've made, it's a fact you can't dismiss
Art flows from within, not the corporate edifice

Record company politics and artists just don't mix
The ones who steal the money have one name, "666”
Pride won't buy your dinner but inside is where it pays
Despite the Record Biz, one song has several ways

I don't want to become anyoneÂ’s hero
But I wouldn't be here now if mine added up to zero
I don't want to dictate the style of music that you do
I just want to hear something a little bit more true

I could go on and on and on and I think I will anyway
Until someday when it's you in your music I hear you play
Can it really be so hard to feel and write down what you think
Or is there something wrong, is your pen filled with phony ink?

While it may be ok for you to live your life a lie
Your fans worship you and I can't help but wonder why
You have worked so hard to be what you wanted to be
But to be yourself, you shouldn't have to try

Time after time you sing and yet your song remains unsung
Show us your true colors, expose your insides to the sun
Songs are more than simply words for you to sing
Will you ever understand that money isn't everything?

I spin the radio dial and hear the commercial pioneers
Every radio station is poison to my ears
That isn't the kind of artist that I want to be
All I really want is for my music to be me

And so the con-artists continue to sell out their souls
While mine's committed to making sure the rock still rolls
And there is only one way to get back what they have lost
But the barrier between greed and visions must be crossed

01/01/1986

Author's Note: Money undermines the creation of art. Not that any form of art can’t be created for financial gain, after all, everyone must earn a living somehow. If a songwriter must record a few songs on each album that will sell the record as a whole, then so be it. But when the financial gains become more important than the art, it turns art into rubbish. Even worse than making ones own art a byproduct of the marketplace, it lends to constructing a machine that will only produce tasteless formula. It creates an atmosphere that suffocates those who wish to create art that speaks the language of their heart. Those in charge of the “business” of art make good fences, but not good neighbors. The artists who cave in to their demands are nothing more than links in the fence that pen in the writers who want to create art. The artificial artists would make better warriors if they laid down their pens and took up swords in their hands. They foil the imagination of those who don’t realize the fence that keeps the competition out is holding them captive within. All done so they can be controlled to doing the bidding of those who bleed them dry from behind their mahogany office desk while their fat asses sit comfortably in fine leather chairs. But only while these artists remain popular enough to feed off of, are they allowed to linger in the pen. How long before the gate opens once more, to trap another and force the forgotten out. Vincent, will they listen then?

Posted on 09/27/2005
Copyright © 2025 JJ Johnson