Always Something More

from Playbill’s Track-By-Track Breakdown (3/27/20):

“ALWAYS SOMETHING MORE”
I was introduced to Kevin Townley through a collaboration with his theatre company, Waterwell. We wrote most of the first act of a musical adaptation of a very ancient play and then the project fell apart. But Kevin’s lyric-writing on this particular song was too good to abandon, and the further we get into 2020 the more I reference this song as a particularly devastating anthem of our times. Those lyrics in the bridge astound me every time. Though we wrote this song quite a while ago, Emily Skinner is actually the only person I’ve ever heard sing it. Some fun history: Emily performed a role in my graduate school thesis way back in 1997 and we’ve been looking for ways to collaborate ever since. Oh, and we once went to Australia together for a concert. I think there are photos of us and koalas? But anyway… it sure was fun to be in the recording studio with her, an absolute pro and a true comic genius.

LYRICS:

“What have I got to lose?”
I ask whenever things get bad.
So I act the fool and find
I’ve lost something I never knew I had.

I lost my sense of wonder when I bought a fake Kandinsky.
I lost my preference for berets thanks to Monica Lewinsky!
I lost my looks to worry when the bills began to pile.
I lost my taste for liquor… but just for a little while.
You’ve paid and paid and paid and paid and paid and paid your dues,
but there’s always something more that you can lose.

I had faith in democracy ’til it all got blown to bits.
And as the years fly by me, I fear I’ll lose my… wits.
I’ve lost all my savings, but the thing that’s most regretful:
I even lost my husband, but I’ve always been forgetful!
You can bet and you can barter, you can angle, you can schmooze,
but there’s always something more that you can lose.

Persephone lost her soul for nibbling on a grape.
Dian Fosse lost her life because she loved an ape.
Marg’ret Thatcher lost her country, any way you spin it.
Amelia Earhart lost her plane!
Too bad she was still in it!

Glancing through the headlines,
You think you’ve heard the worst of the news,
But there’s always something more that you can lose.
Now if you want a moral, the writing’s on the wall:
If there’s always something more that you can lose,
You can never lose it all!