We'll Be All Right

Flowers're pretty

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Can you sing a song in a whispery voice
About your big love as if you were the first?
Can you do it all cute, like you don't have a choice?
If you can be bad, but not quite the worst

You'll be all right
The poor kids'll listen (they don't know any better)

Can you dress for your gig with an old-timey twang?
Just like the old days, but a little bit cleaner
Can you parrot the songs that your dead heroes sang?
If you can sing it all sweet when they would have been meaner

You'll be OK
The condo people'll like you

Can you sing a song that'll make us forget
The big problems and make our small ones seem strange?
Don't show us any ideas we haven't seen yet
If you can assure us that nothing should change

You'll do just fine
The baby people'll love you

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This is a tongue-in-cheek but rather derisive song about some current trends in music.  Specifically, it's directed at the type of breathy "Americana" acts (and their liberal-yet-complacent audience) whose idea of creativity seems to be aping Nick Drake and creating music so predictable, so lowest-common-denominator and unchallenging that it apologizes for even being audible.  That, or they're sterilely covering folk songs note-for-note in anachronistic getups, trying to trick us into believing it's not 2011 (sorry, but your Iron and Wine arrangement was a dead giveaway).  Surely we can set our sights a little higher.