How it Used to Be

LETRA

How it Used to Be

Tell me how it used to
How it used to
How it used to be

One time, a psychic had told me something 'bout my future life
How I would live to be a hundred with my future wife
Surrounded by my great grandchildren
Reading the funnies and telling ‘em stories
'Bout how things were different in my 20's, like:
"Gather round, you two, shut off the TV
I got a story, and maybe you youngins might not believe me
But 80 years ago, the world wasn't so kind, then
Now it sounds silly but I remember a time when
There was so many of us in love with one another
And tried to show it but couldn't 'cuz they wouldn't let a pair of people
Share a life together 'cuz they said it was evil and against the law
But them laws wasn't fair or equal
People debated and shouted and demonstrated and spouted hatred
Instead of trying to have a conversation about it
But soon it led us to having celebrations about it
Look at what my generation sprouted" (Marriage is legal!)
Then the psychic took her small fee
I thought about the way things were before me
And how every generation gets a little more free
I felt hope thinking how things could all be
In eighty years I guess we gon' see when our grandkids saying to us

Tell me how it used to be
Cause we've come so far
Tell me how it used to be
Tell me how it used to
How it used to
How it used to be

"Grandpa, is it true what they say?
That way back in the day day
You know? Like way back, like mad long
That President Riff-Raff used to write rap songs?
And I heard the people lit nicotine
But they weren't allowed their sweet, sweet sticky green
And they let a kid be shipped to Iraq
But they wouldn't let him sip on a whiskey when he was back!"

Yep, that's back when life was a terminal illness
Before that doctors learned that we came
With a little switch every person turned in their brains
When life was overwhelming and so we turned from the pain
Back when slums grew in the shadows
Of a 170 story chateaus
And the people under ‘em fought
For the crumbs that fell from the windows up at the top
We claimed freedom but our elections were bought
By a high-spitting executive, not a second of thought
Back when corporations were people but people weren't even people
And people just weren't connecting the dots

Tell me how it used to be
Cause we've come so far
Tell me how it used to be
Tell me how it used to
How it used to
How it used to be

People would hate you over what spirit you prayed to
You talk and they wouldn't hear it
They fear it and decapitate you
And back in the states all we're doing is just always say that they're doing
Placing humans in boxes over what appearance they're near to

I fill in boxes, they said inside of it was a future
They bomb a school full of students and do away the computers
Technology, we can use it on mother earth to improve her
Instead we steady abuse her but was it worth the maneuver?

Who are we kidding? You and me didn't ruin the system
But soon the kids who crawled out of the sewers grew to be different

Brutally killing for power's not our true intuition
So we flip the script now we living with the newest traditions

Smashing the walls and dancing and drinking
Wine in the kitchen

Kissing and hugging and laughing
F*** it we shining and winning

Women and men looking back and telling

Reminding the children of how it