Ballots Ballads and Bullets

They tell you that your voice is just a whisper in the wind,

a sentimental notion of where to begin.

A sad and pretty melody, a tune you softly hum

while you're waiting for a future that is never gonna come.

They want you to believe it, that your power is a song,

a lovely, useless gesture to prove where you belong.

On the losing side of history, the romantic and the weak;

the quiet, gentle people who are too afraid to speak.

And they're not wrong, you know, our vote can

feel just like a prayer, a lonely piece of paper surrendered to the air.

A hopeful little story told against a coming tide,

a place where all our better angels have to run and hide.

And our ballots are just ballads, they're just sorrowful and slow;

a tune about a better world we don't know how to grow.

They're a hymn about a harvest that we're never gonna see,

a quiet lamentation for the way things ought to be.

But you gather all the singers, and you get them in a room,

and that ballad starts to sound a lot more like a sonic boom.

You sing your song into the void, you sing it clear and true,

and your neighbor in the darkness, they start singing with you too.

And soon the air is trembling with a new and fearsome chord,

a harmony of every single soul that's been ignored.

It's the music of the fed-up, the forgotten and the wronged,

the place where every single one of us has now belonged.

And the men up in the tower, they can hear the rising sound

and they feel the steady rhythm shaking their unholy ground.

A single voice is just a note, a single vote's a word,

but a million make a message that will damn well be heard.

And a ballad can be beautiful, but a chorus is a threat,

and every single one of us ain't finished singing yet.

So sing your heart out, sing your pain, sing for the stolen and the lost.

A ballad is just a ballad 'til you calculate the cost

of what will happen if we stop, and then you multiply the sound

until it is a bullet in the silence all around.

And our ballots are just ballads, they're just sorrowful and slow;

a tune about a better world we don't know how to grow.

They're a hymn about a harvest that we're never gonna see,

a quiet lamentation for the way things ought to be.

But you gather all the singers, and you get them in a room,

and that ballad starts to sound a lot more like a sonic boom.