Jello Biafra – That's Progress lyrics

Speaker: "Gimme an 'M'."
Crowd: "M!"
S: "Gimme an 'A'."
C: "A!"
S: "Gimme a 'U'."
C: "U!"
S: "Gimme an 'L'."
C: "L!"
S: "Gimme your money!"
C: "Sure!"
S: "What's that spell?"
C: "Maul!"
S: What's that spell?"
C: "Shopping Mall!!"

Excuse me pardon my greed
You're evicted, time to leave
Don't matter if you family's lived here 30 years
We're tripling the rent
Time's up, the sheriff's here
Too bad for you if you freeze out in the street
The croissant and cookie palace will symbolize the old neighborhood
whose soul has slowly died.
Been gentrified

[Chorus:]
That's progress, That's progress
Doesn't progress make you feel good inside?

Cameras catch you runnin' red lights,
Schoolrooms with no windows,
Computer picks your career at age 15,
Universal price code i.d.'s with the stripe the laser reads
and records where you've been, when you're sick and what you eat.
For every spy in government there's 50 private eyes
who round up dirt on you to keep on file then sell the file.

[Chorus]

Progress don't make me feel so good inside.
You can't live here,
We won't hire you,
We know all the nasty things you do.
Bought a dossier of your whole life
clear back to the pranks you did in school at age 5.
There's millions on file at the touch of a button
your boss or your landlord will love our choice cuts of gossip.
If it's lies, what can you do? 'cause it costs too much to sue.
The last person who'll ever see your file is you.

Had enough,
I moved back home to the mountains where i belong,
but ski resorts have tamed the wild west.
The hills we used to roam...
Now they're privately owned and scarred with cheezy suburbs and cement.
The 'tracts for sale' sign promises 'deer in your back yard'.
If the deer somehow get past the fences and guards and the industrial 'park'.

That's progress! That's progress!
Looks like i'll have to move to yellowknife
Progress-bleah! [x4]
Your idea of progress wrecks too many lives