SONG: Lawns are the Enemy

SONG:

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: Scientific American, 9 Apr 21, “Brood X Cicadas Could Cause a Bird Baby Boom,” as used in the post “Brood X – the cicada boom we expect this summer – will boost birds. Temporarily…..”

ABSTRACT: This is last month’s song, on time for this month. The music part – by which I mean, everything except the vocals – was ready 30 days ago. But it took a while to make words, for some reason, and to get some space in the house to actually sing them. It was supposed to be somewhere in that triangle between The Ramones, The Beach Boys, and Jesus and Mary Chain. Because if cicadas were going to sound like anything, it’d be retro punk drone rock with massed vocals.

The chorus I should credit to Suzanne from Spiny Gumbo, who said, “Lawns are the enemy” during a group chat about cicadas that somehow grew out of a March Madness pool that turned into an Oscars pool and now I think Tour de France…. Anyway, Spiny Gumbo. Ask for it by name.

I suppose I should point out that cicadas don’t actually damage your lawn. They’d just rather have trees and shrubs to climb up in order to peel off their grub-suits and stretch out their new wings.

This is two guitars, a bass, drums, a buzzy synth, an organ, and I think 12 vocal tracks. It’s not, like, super-original, but it’s not trying to be. As soon as you hear 10 seconds of the song, you should just about know how it’s going to go. Half energized, half hypnotic. Good luck, loud bugs! This year, you’re a pop sensation.

LYRICS:

My friends all been asleep for seventeen
Crawling up and whaddya think we seen
We’re peeling back our shells
We look around and yell

CH:
Lawns are the enemy
Lawns are the enemy
Five billion friends and me
We wanna climb some trees
We want something to see
And then we’ll catch some z’s

The woods we want all seem to go away
Houses, streets and yards are here to stay
With what’s been going on
We won’t be here too long

CH: (x3)
Lawns are the enemy
Lawns are the enemy
Five billion friends and me
We wanna climb some trees
We want something to see
And then we’ll catch some z’s