SONG: “False Social Reality”.
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Nature Communications 23 Aug 2022, “Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half,” as used in the post “False social reality”: More people care about climate change than you think. A LOT more..
ABSTRACT:
Technically this song is a day late, but I’m going to give myself this because life is hard, man, and I already owe two penitential covers, one of which is nearly all the way done. I basically had the music to this done back in August but when it came time to write lyrics and record something, I couldn’t. None of the research I’d read about seemed to fit the mood.
Musically, I set out to have a little fun and use a trick I first noticed in Camper Van Beethoven’s “She Divines Water,” which switches between a 4/4 verse and 3/4 chorus. Then, weeks after I’d basically roughed out the arrangement for this, I heard or read someone talking about how the Beatles’ “She Said She Said” does the same thing, switching to 3/4 during the “When I was a boyyyy…” part. I’d never really noticed that before, but just thinking about it was enough to earworm me with “She Said She Said” for days.
That was enough to kick the lyric into motion. It’d be a conversation between two people, a “she” and an “I.” (The music already had a call and response with the electric guitar anyway.) The words tumbled out after that.
Singing was hard – finding alone time, but also just feeling it. Been feeling easily exhausted lately, maybe from doing yard work in the heat, maybe from staring at hurricane spaghetti models again, maybe just being old.
The stacking of bottled water was a concrete detail I needed to give the thing a sense of a real conversation, not an abstraction. And, you know, watching hurricane maps, wondering if we’re in the cone again… it’s become more of a thing over the last few years. Which is really what the song is about. We know, but we don’t know each other knows.
LYRICS:
Everybody knows, she said / I don’t think that’s true
There’s no reason to hope, she said / except for me and youWe stacked the bottled water / That someone else was buying
Watched the forecast on our phones / It felt like they were lying
And encouraging inaction / encouraging inaction / inactionWe are surrounded by false… social reality
No one cares for facts, she said / if no one else can see them
But everyone got packed, I said / So people must believe themA national concern, she said / More of us are for it
A pluralistic ignorance / it’s too much to ignore it
It encourages inaction / encourages inaction / inactionWe are surrounded by false… social reality
(SOLO)
We are surrounded by false… social reality
We are surrounded by false… social reality