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Most of My Heroes Are Pretty Damn Problematic

from Ordinary Eternal Machinery by Nathan Leigh

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lyrics

let’s fade out on the great man myth of history
the carefully constructed biographies
the fashionably redacted sympathies
and the fantasy that they’re everything we can’t be
cause i’ll never forget the time that i realized
that lots of the things in my history textbooks are wrong
and i’ll never forget the time that i realized
there’s more than a little hypocrisy in beatles songs

<chorus>

cause john lennon beat his wife
and woody guthrie was a racist
and public enemy don’t care much at all for jews
and i don’t know what’s right
can i defend their work as artists?
and if i had to, i don’t know how i’d choose
cause most of my heroes are pretty damn problematic

</chorus>

i like to pretend bowie never was obsessed with nazis
cause there aren’t many male bi role models
and we need more male bi role models
and i even forgive him for tin machine being lazy
and he says he regrets the things that he said back in 76
and man cocaine’s one hell of a drug
and i don’t know if that’s a good enough fix
but i know i’m complicit in sweeping it under the rug

<chorus>

when jefferson said all men were created equal
he owned other men as property
his whole fortune was built on slavery
so let’s not pretend our history’s all that simple
cause few of us live up to the things that we stand for
even ian mackaye said some pretty dumb shit as a kid
and if he can’t live up to the things that he stands for
does that invalidate all of the good things that fugazi did?

<chorus>

credits

from Ordinary Eternal Machinery, released May 19, 2017

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Nathan Leigh Brooklyn, New York

guitars, synths, orchestra, and suitcases

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