#AlternateFridayMusic
Jan 17 2025

The prompt is Battery

#ThePolice “When the Is Running Down You Make the Best of What’s Still Around” Zenyatta Mondatta 1980

Lyrics:
"I sit in my old car
Same one I've had for years
Old battery's runnin' down
It ran for years and years"

This song is best experienced as on the album, preceded by Driven to Tears - musically it feels like the outro for DTT (the percussive transition is so satisfying), and thematically, it turns the tables from DTT's reflection on the poverty and strife the band saw in their travels in contrast to their lives as rock stars, to WTWIRD's forecast of the effects of what comfortable societies have wrought coming home to roost.

The quoted lyrics are part of a litany of modern conveniences that are, well, running down, in both a cautionary tale and a jaundiced look at what passes for hardship in the privileged world. Minus the #80s specifics (#VCR et al), this feels even more real today.

youtube.com/watch?v=uwuf6qFYKp…

#80sMusic