Suburbia Overture: Greetings From Mary Bell Township! / (Vampire) Culture / Love Me, Normally

(album: The Normal Album - 2020)

[Greetings from Mary Bell Township!]

Good morning!

White picket fences
Barbed wire and trenches
Trick or treat, merry Christmas
Howdy neighbor, thank you, Jesus
Oh, what is he building in that painted lady?
A participation trophy wife or blonde, blue-eyed baby?
Wide-eyed and wired, the snap-crackle-pop of the Geiger
Camouflage billboards for lead-lined Brooks Brothers
You elbow the jukebox and sing "Duck and Cover"
And breed out our incisors, feed on white wine and Pfizer
It don't look like survival, b-but buy now or die

Suburbia
You're not alone
The lights are on
But no one's home
So, welcome home

Myers-Briggs, OKULTRA
Takes a village to fake a whole culture
Your ear to the playground, your eye on the ball
Your head in the gutter, your brains on the wall
Home is where the heart is
You ain't homeless, but you're heartless
It's the safest on the market
But you still gotta watch where you park it

So give me your half-life crisis
I can tell that you know where paradise is
Where parasites don't care what your blood type is
Only pheromones and serotonin decide
If it's true that a snowflake only matters in a blizzard
Everyone knows that nobody knows that
Everybody's all up in my, everybody's all up in my
Everybody's all up in my business

Suburbia
Where you belong
The lights are on
But no one's home
So, welcome home

Ch-ch-chameleon peacocks are talk of the town
Well, word gets around on hit number stations
He cums radiation
The dog bites the postman while basement eyes dream
Of a night at the drive-in with an AR-15

[(Vampire) Culture]

I dropped my eyeballs in the bonfire, we fucked on a bed of nails
I caught Kuru from your sister and died laughing in jail
Smell those screaming teenage sweetbreads on the 4th of July grill
Smile and wave, boys, kiss the cook, live laugh and love, please pass the pills

It's only culture, it's only culture
It's only culture, sulfur, smoke, and soot
You learned to torture house cats like vultures
You cocked and sucked your lack of empathy, pulled the trigger with your foot to prove you've got

Blood, didn't they want your blood?
So why apologize for being blue and cold?
Blood, didn't they want your blood?
So don't apologize when you turn blue and cold

It's only culture, it's only culture
It's only ah, ah, ah, ah
Culture's not your friend
Hey, fuck your culture, I ain't got no culture
It's only culture, and it's more afraid of you than you are of it
Go on, drink that

Blood, didn't they want your blood?
So why apologize when you turn blue and cold?
Blood, didn't they want your blood?
So don't apologize for being blue and cold

Were you Nabokov to a Salinger?
Jung to Freud or Das to a Leary?
Were you mother, daughter, subject, and author?
You don't make the rules, you just write them down and do it by the book you throw around

[Love Me, Normally]

Do you know the difference between blazing trails and slash-and-burn?
Going against the grain and catching splinters?
You pull out your Rorschach like a paint-by-numbers treasure map
The ink upon your jigsaw piece trace you back to your fingerprints
Well Lot he had his lot in life, Job his job and I guess you'll too, and die
The Lord looked down, said, "hey, you're only mortal"
Giveth and taketh away 'til things come out a certain way
Leave you wondering when they might go back to normal

Leave you wondering why they can't have just been normal