Everything Looks the Same

I’m just driving down this highway
Past a shopping mall
I see billboard after billboard
Hear the advertiser’s call
I see cars and I hear cars and I smell cars
All just like mine
I see a world covered with asphalt
You’re in parking lot G9
It’s just sprawling on forever
It doesn’t even have a name
It’s the land where everything looks the same

See the signs rise high above us
Flashing day and night
Verizon Wireless, Holiday Inn
Coca-Cola Lite
There once was grass here, maybe forest
But none of that’s here now
It’s just product after product
As much as time and space allows
Am I in Tennessee or Texas
Baltimore or Burlingame
It’s the land where everything looks the same

Ancient forests, family farmers
Or the commons, heart of town
Does it make money, that’s the question
If it don’t we’ll knock it down
There’s not a bicycle for miles
Not a soul in sight
That can’t be seen behind a wheel
A few feet from the headlights
I don’t know my neighbors
And I feel ashamed
In the land where everything looks the same

If you don’t like the Wal-Mart
Take these drugs and you’ll feel OK
Now go sit behind the register
And pass your life away
Eat these burgers from the factory
And if you should get fat
Just give us some more money
And we’ve got some drugs for that
In this nation of individuals
Is there one that we can blame
In the land where everything looks the same

As I’m driving past the clearcut
With the brand new multi-cinema
And the massive mural praising
The latest enema
I think of moving eastward
Maybe Gant or Amsterdam
Far from Ronald McDonald
And his greedy Uncle Sam
Where life looks more like life
And not some cardboard money game
It’s the land where everything looks the same

“Everything Looks the Same” originally appeared on the 2003 Soundclick release, Beyond the Mall.

Although there have been many successful efforts to stop the building of new highways, to prevent the logging of forests, and other successful campaigns, overall, the capitalists have won. They have successfully “developed” much of the US to the point where in so many places you would have no idea where you were by looking around you, since all you will see in every direction are the same big box chain stores. The same sprawling parking lots, all indistinguishable one from the other. The same rows of cheaply-built houses, held together by glue.