Playlist Father John Misty

father john misty - a bigger paper bag

Dance like a butterfly and drink like a fish
If you're bent on taking demons down with only your fist
And I've never known anyone who could lose himself in a bigger paper bag
The weaker the signal, the sweeter the noise
Hunching over an instrument that you now employ
Like the Starvation Army needs a marching piano in the band
Are you feeling used?
I do

Oh, I was pissing on the flame
Like a child with cash or a king on cocaine
I've got the world by the balls
Am I supposed to behave?

What a fraud
What a con
You're the only
One I love

It's easy to assume that you've built some rapport
With a someone who only likes you for what you like yourself for
Okay, you be my mirror but remember that there are only a few angles I tend to prefer
I'm only here to serve

Oh, I was pissing on the flame
Like a child with cash or a king on cocaine
I've got the world by the balls
Am I supposed to behave?

Oh, I was dancing 'round the flame
Like a high-wire act with a "who, me?" face
I was living on nothing but water and cake

What a fraud
What a con
You're the only
One I love

One I love
One I love

father john misty - ballad of the dying man

[Verse 1]
Naturally the dying man wonders to himself:
Has commentary been more elusive than anybody else?
And had he successively beaten back the rising tide
Of idiots, dilettantes, and fools
On his watch while he was alive
Lord, just a little more time

[Refrain]
Oh, in no time at all
This'll be the distant past
Ooh

[Verse 2]
So says the dying man once I'm in the box
Just think of all the overrated hacks running amok
And all of the pretentious, ignorant voices that will go unchecked
The homophobes, hipsters, and 1%
The false feminists he'd managed to detect
Oh, who will critique them once he's left?

[Refrain]
Oh, in no time at all
This'll be the distant past

[Bridge]
What he'd give for one more day to rate and analyze
The world made in his image as of yet
To realize what a mess to leave behind

[Verse 3]
Eventually the dying man takes his final breath
But first checks his news feed to see what he's 'bout to miss
And it occurs to him a little late in the game
We leave as clueless as we came
For the rented heavens to the shadows in the cave
We'll all be wrong someday

[Outro]
Oh
Oh
Oh

father john misty - birdie

Take off, little winged creature
It's nothing but teens in ravines
And antics on concrete down here
And are you really as free as all the great songs would have me believe?
Let me tell you why some day, Birdie, you're gonna envy me

Some dream of a world written in lines of code
Well, I hope they engineer out politics, romance, and edifice
Two outta three ain't bad

Some envision a state governed by laws of business
Merger and acquisition instead of violence or nations
Where do I sign up?

Take off, little winged creature
It's nothing but falling debris, strollers, and babies down here
And you may be up in the sky but our paradigms are just as deep and just as wide
What with all our best attempts at transcendence
Something's bound to take

Soon, we'll live in a global culture devoid of gender or race
There's just one tiny line:
You're either born behind
Or you're free to peek inside

Life as just narrative, metadata in aggregate
Where the enigma of humanity's wrapped up finally
That as they say is that

Oh, that day can't come soon enough
It'll be so glorious
When they finally find out what's bugging us

father john misty - blank space

Nice to meet you, where you been?
I could show you incredible things
Magic, madness, heaven, sin
Saw you there, and I thought

"Oh my God, look at that face"
You look like my next mistake
Love's a game, wanna play?

New money, suit and tie
I can read you like a magazine
Ain't it funny, rumours fly
And I know you heard about me

So hey, let's be friends
I'm dying to see how this one ends
Grab your passport and my hand
I can make the bad guys good for a weekend

So it's gonna be forever
Or it's gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it's over
If the high was worth the pain

Got a long list of ex lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
'Cause, you know, I love the players
And you love the game

'Cause we're young, and we're reckless
We'll take this way too far
It'll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar

Got a long list of ex lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
But I got a blank space, baby
And I'll write your name

Cherry lips, crystal skies
I could show you incredible things
Stolen kisses, pretty lies
You're the king, baby I'm your queen

Find out what you want
Be that girl for a month
But the worst's yet to come

Screaming, crying, perfect storms
I can make all the tables turn
Rose garden filled with thorns
Keep you second guessing like

"Oh my God, who is she? "
I get drunk on jealousy
But you'll come back each time you leave
'Cause darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream

So, it's gonna be forever
Or it's gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it's over
If the high was worth the pain

Got a long list of ex lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
'Cause, you know, I love the players
And you love the game

'Cause we're young, and we're reckless
We'll take this way too far
It'll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar

Got a long list of ex lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
But I got a blank space, baby
And I'll write your name

Boys only want love if it's torture
Don't say I didn't, say I didn't warn ya
Boys only want love if it's torture
Don't say I didn't, say I didn't warn ya

So, it's gonna be forever
Or it's gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it's over
If the high was worth the pain

Got a long list of ex lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
'Cause, you know, I love the players
And you love the game

'Cause we're young, and we're reckless
We'll take this way too far
It'll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar

Got a long list of ex lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
But I got a blank space, baby
And I'll write your name

father john misty - bored in the usa

How many people rise and say
"My brain's so awfully glad to be here
For yet another mindless day"?

Now, I've got all morning to obsessively accrue
A small nation of meaningful objects
And they've got to represent me too

By this afternoon, I'll live in debt
By tomorrow, be replaced by children

How many people rise and think
"Oh good, the stranger's body's still here
Our arrangement hasn't changed"?

Now, I've got a lifetime to consider all the ways
I've grown more disappointing to you
As my beauty warps and fades
I suspect you feel the same
When I was young, I dreamt of a
Passionate obligation to a roommate

Is this the part where I get all I ever wanted?
Who said that?
Can I get my money back?

Just a little bored in the USA
Oh, just a little bored in the USA
Save me, white Jesus bored in the USA
Oh, they gave me a useless education
And a subprime loan on a craftsman home
Keep my prescriptions filled
And now I can't get off but I can kind of deal
Oh, with being bored in the USA
Oh, just a little bored in the USA
Save me, President Jesus I'm bored in the USA
How did it happen? Bored in the USA

father john misty - chateau lobby 4

Emma eats bread and butter
Like a queen would have ostrich and cobra wine
We?ll have satanic Christmas Eve
And play piano in the Chateau lobby

I?ve never done this
Baby, be gentle
It?s my first time
I?ve got you inside
People are boring
But you?re something else completely
Damn, let?s take our chances
I wanna take you in the kitchen
Lift up your wedding dress someone was probably murdered in
So bourgeoisie to keep waiting
Dating for twenty years just feels pretty civilian

I?ve never thought that
Ever thought that once
In my whole life
You are my first time
People are boring
But you?re something else I can?t explain
You take my last name

First time, you let me stay the night despite your own rules
You took off early to go cheat your way through film school
You left a note in your perfect script: "Stay as long as you want"
I haven?t left your bed since

I haven?t hated all the same things
As somebody else
Since I remember
What?s going on for?
What are you doing with your whole life?
How about forever?

father john misty - every man needs a companion

Every man needs a companion
Someone to turn his thoughts to
I know I do
Every man needs a companion
Someone to console him
Like I need you

John the Baptist took Jesus Christ
Down to the river on a Friday night
They talked about Mary like a couple of boys
With nothing to lose
Too scared to try

Every man needs a companion
Someone to turn his thoughts to
I know I do
Every man needs a companion
Someone to console him
Like I need you

Joseph Campbell and The Rolling Stones
Couldn't give me a myth
So I had to write my own
Like I'm hung up on religion
Though I know it's a waste
I never liked the name Joshua
I got tired of J

Every man needs a companion
Someone to console him
Like I need you

father john misty - hollywood forever cemetery sings

Jesus Christ, girl
What are people gonna think
When I show up to one of several funerals
I've attended for grandpa this week
With you
With me

Someone's got to help me dig
Someone's got to help me dig

Jesus Christ, girl
It hasn't been long so it seems
Since I was picking out an island and a tomb for you
At the Hollywood Cemetery
You kiss
On me

We should let this dead guy sleep
We should let this dead guy sleep

Jesus Christ, girl
I laid up for hours in a daze
Retracing the expanse of your American back
With Adderall and weed in my veins
You came
I think
Cause the marble made my cheeks look pink
But I'm unsure of so many things

Someone's got to help me dig
Someone's got to help me dig
Someone's got to help me dig

father john misty - holy shit

Ancient holy wars
Dead religions, holocausts
New regimes, old ideas
That's now myth, that's now real

Original sin, genetic fate
Revolutions, spinning plates
It's important to stay informed
The commentary to comment on

Oh, and no one ever really
Knows you, and life is brief
So i've heard, but what's that
Gotta do with this black hole in me?

Age-old gender roles
Infotainment, capital
Golden bows and mercury
Bohemian nightmare, dust bowl chic

This documentary's lost on me
Satirical news, free energy
Mobile lifestyle, loveless sex
Independence, happiness

Oh, and no one ever knows the
Real you, and life is brief
So i've heard, but what's that
Gotta do with this atom bomb in me?

Coliseum families
The golden era of TV
Eunuch sluts, consumer slaves
A rose by any other name

Carbon footprint, incest streams
Fuck the mother in the green
Planet cancer, sweet revenge
Isolation, online friends

Oh, and love is just an
Institution based on human frailty
What's your paradise gotta do
With Adam and Eve?

Maybe love is just an economy
Based on resource scarcity
But what I fail to see is what
That's gotta do with you and me

father john misty - i went to the store one day

We met in a parking lot
I was buying coffee and cigarettes
Firewood and bad wine long since gone
But I'm still drunk and hot, wide awake, breathing hard
Now, in just one year's time
I've become jealous, rail-thin
Prone to paranoia when I'm stoned
If this isn't true love, someone oughta put me in a home
Say, do you wanna get married
And put an end to our endless progressive tendency to scorn
Provincial concepts like your dowry and your daddy's farm?

For love to find us of all people
I never thought it'd be so simple

Let's buy a plantation house and let the yard grow wild until we don't need the signs that say, "Keep out"
I've got some money left and it's cheaper in the South
I need someone I can trust to protect me from our seven daughters when my body says, "Enough!"
Don't let me die in a hospital, I'll save the big one for the last time we make love
Insert here a sentiment re: our golden years
All cause I went to the store one day
"Seen you around, what's your name?"

father john misty - i 039 m writing a novel

I ran down the road, pants down to my knees
Screaming "please come help me, that
Canadian shaman gave a little too much to me!"
And I'm writing a novel because it's never been done before

First house that I saw I wrote house up on the door
And told the people who lived there they had to get out
"cause my reality is realer than yours"
And there's no time for the present
And there's a black dog on the bed

I went to the backyard to burn my only clothes
And the dog ran out and said
"you can't turn nothing into nothing is with me no more"
Well I'm no doctor but that monkey might be right
And if he is I'll be walking him my whole life

I rode to Malibu on a dune buggy with Neal
He said "you're gonna have to drive me down on the beach
If you ever want to write the reel"
And I said "I'm sorry, young man what is your name again?"

Now everywhere I go in West Hollywood
It's filled with people pretending they don't see the actress
And the actress wishing that they could
We could do ayahuasca
Baby if I wasn't holding all these drinks

Something 'bout the way Violet whips her hair
That makes me empty my pockets on the corner
to corner bumming twenties
As if I was the mayor
I don't need any new friends, Momma
But I could really use something to do
So if you're up for it sometimes
I swear you wouldn't have to be my muse

Heidegger and Sartre, drinking poppy tea
I could've sworn last night I passed out in my van
And now these guys are pouring one for me
I'll never leave the canyon 'cause I'm surrounded on all sides
By people writing novels and living on amusement rides

father john misty - in twenty years or so

What's there to lose
For a ghost in a cheap rental suit
Clinging to a rock that is hurtling through space?

And what's to regret
For a speck on a speck on a speck
Made more ridiculous the more serious he gets?

Oh, it's easy to forget

Oh, I read somewhere
That in twenty years
More or less
This human experiment will reach its violent end
But I look at you
As our second drinks arrive
The piano player's playing "This Must Be the Place"
And it's a miracle to be alive

One more time

There's nothing to fear
There's nothing to fear
There's nothing to fear

[Instrumental]

father john misty - leaving la

[Verse 1]
I was living on the hill
By the water tower and hiking trails
And when the big one hit I?d have a seat
To watch masters abandon their dogs and dogs run free
Oh baby, it?s time to leave
Take the van and the hearse down to New Orleans
Leave under the gaze of the billboard queens
Five-foot chicks with parted lips selling sweatshop jeans

[Verse 2]
These L.A. phonies and their bullshit bands
That sound like dollar signs and Amy Grant
So reads the pull quote from my last cover piece
Entitled "The Oldest Man in Folk Rock Speaks?
You can hear it all over the airwaves
The manufactured gasp of the final days
Someone should tell them ?bout the time that they don?t have
To praise the glorious future and the hopeless past

[Verse 3]
A few things the songwriter needs
Arrows of Love, a mask of Tragedy
But if you want ecstasy or birth control
Just run the tap until the water?s cold
Anything else you can get online
A creation myth or a .45
You're going to need one or the other to survive
Where only the armed or the funny make it out alive

[Verse 4]
Mara taunts me 'neath the tree
She's like, "Oh great, that's just what we all need
Another white guy in 2017
Who takes himself so goddamn seriously."
She's not far off, the strange thing is
That's pretty much what I thought when I started this
It took me my whole life to learn to the play the G
But the role of Oedipus was a total breeze

[Verse 5]
Still I dreamt of garnering all rave reviews
Just believably a little north of God's own truth
"He's a national treasure now, and here's the proof
In the form of his major label debut"
A little less human with each release
Closing the gap between the mask and me
I swear I'll never do this, but is it okay?
Don't want to be that guy but it's my birthday
If everything ends with the photo then I'm on my way

[Refrain]
Ohhh-ho-o-oh oh-ho-ho-ho-oh

[Verse 6]
I watched my old gods all collapse
Were way more violent than my cartoon past
It's like my father said before he croaked
"Son, you're killing me, and that's all folks."
So why is it I'm so distraught
That what I'm selling is getting bought
At some point you just can't control
What people use your fake name for

[Verse 7]
So I never learned to play the lead guitar
I always more preferred the speaking parts
Besides there's always someone willing to
Fill up the spaces that I couldn't use
Nonetheless, I've been practicing my whole life
Washing dishes, playing drums, and getting by
Until I figured, if I'm here then I just might
Conceal my lack of skill here in the spotlights
Maya, the mother of illusions, a beard, and I

[Verse 8]
2000 years or so since Ovid taught
Night-blooming, teenage rosebuds, dirty talk
And I'm merely a minor fascination to
Manic virginal lust and college dudes
I'm beginning to begin to see the end
Of how it all goes down between me and them
Some 10-verse chorus-less diatribe
Plays as they all jump ship, "I used to like this guy
This new shit really kinda makes me wanna die"

[Refrain]
Ohhh-ho-oh-oh oh-ho-ho-ho-oh
Ohhh-ho-oh-oh oh-ho-ho-ho-oh

[Verse 9]
My first memory of music's from
The time at JCPenney's with my mom
The watermelon candy I was choking on
Barbara screaming, "Someone help my son!"
I relive it most times the radio's on
That "tell me lies, sweet little white lies" song
That's when I first saw the comedy won't stop for
Even little boys dying in department stores

[Verse 10]
So we leave town in total silence
New Year's Day, it's 6 o'clock AM
I've never seen Sunset this abandoned
Reminds me predictably of the world's end
It'll be good to get more space
God knows what all these suckers paid
I can stop drinking and you can write your script
But what we both think now is...

father john misty - misty 039 s nightmares 1 amp 2

No crickets, no creatures are a stirring
On the last night of the Chinese year
I need a warm hand over the water
Ever since I lost mine (fireworks disaster)

Now [Unknown] quite awake
Gonna take my life
Gonna take my life back one day

Now I'm watching you changing the mirror
And I'm unable to move
When all my girlfriends appear in the doorway
I don't know how they got here
I don't know what to say about this

And they all go that way
Gonna take my life
Gonna take my life back one day

father john misty - nancy from now on

Oh pour me another drink
And punch me in the face
You can call me Nancy
Every man wears a symbol
And I know I have mine
I've got my right hand stamped
In the concentration camp where my organs scream "slow down, man!"

Flowers and bows
Milk and honey flow
Just a couple states below

Oh hook me up to the tank
And roll me to the door
I'm going where my body leads me
I can fend for myself
With what looks I have left
I'll put away a few
And pretty soon I'll be breaking things I have of you

Flowers and bows
Milk and honey flow
Just a couple states below

Forgive me how it was
A place under the sun
Before the devil made me run
Run boy, run boy

father john misty