YEAR OF THE BAD PRESIDENT
Copyright ©
Susan Werner
Description: Guitar
We watched colour TV and we kept to ourselves
Watching the rerun adventures of One Adam Twelve
While the Catholic Bible watched us from the shelves
And JFK smiled from the wall
That was the winter I'd finally fall
Got my collarbone cracked and my handlebars bent
It was the year of the bad president
Billie Jean, she beat Bobbie and made history
And OJ set the record at two thousand three
And my brother talked just like Mohammed Ali
And ran down Franklin Street in the raw
And the groovy young priest drove a new Yamaha
The same year my aunt Marylou left the convent, mm
It was the year of the bad president
"We got something to show you," the neighbour girls said
"Our daddy hides magazines under the bed"
So we laid 'em all out there across the bedspread
And the women looked on wild and crazy-eyed
In their stockings and heels with their legs open wide
And all summer those images came and they went
The year of the bad president
Lai lai lai lai
We all sat on the sofa and watched his goodbye
He had tears in his eyes but he tried not to cry
And then his helicopter rose into the sky
And my mother looked at my brothers and me
Said, "The world today's not the way it used to be"
And I couldn't say how but I knew just what she meant
It was the year of the bad president, yeah yeah
[July 1998]