Rent

How do you document real life
 When real life's getting more like fiction each day?
 Headlines, bread-lines blow my mind
 Then now this deadline, eviction or pay rent
 How do you write a song when the chords sound wrong
 Though they once sounded right and rare?
 When the notes are sour
 Where is the power you once had to ignite the air?
 And we're hungry and frozen, some life that we've chosen
 How we gonna pay?
 How we gonna pay?
 How we gonna pay last year's rent?
 We light candles
 ♪
 How do you start a fire when there's nothing to burn
 And it feels like something's stuck in your flue?
 How can you generate heat when you can't feel your feet
 And they're turning blue?
 You light up a mean blaze with posters and screenplays
 How we gonna pay?
 How we gonna pay?
 How we gonna pay last year's rent?
 Don't screen, Maureen, it's me, Joanne
 Your substitute production manager
 Hey, hey, hey, did you eat?
 Don't change the subject Maureen
 But darling, you haven't eaten all day
 You won't throw up
 You won't throw up
 The digital delay
 Didn't blow up, exactly
 There may have been one teeny tiny spark
 You're not calling Mark
 How do you stay on your feet when on every street?
 It's trick or treat and tonight it's trick
 Welcome back to town, oh, I should lie down
 Everything's brown and uh-oh, I feel sick
 Where is he? Getting dizzy
 How we gonna pay?
 How we gonna pay?
 How we gonna pay last year's rent?
 ♪
 Allison, baby, you sound sad
 I don't believe those two, after everything I've done
 Ever since our wedding, I'm dirt, they'll see
 I can help 'em all out in the long run
 The music ignites the night with passionate fire
 (Maureen, I'm not a theatre person)
 The narration crackles and pops with incendiary wit
 (Could never be a threatre person)
 Zoom in as they burn the past to the ground
 And feel the heat of the future's glow
 (Hello?)
 Hello? Maureen?
 Your equipment won't work?
 Okay, alright, I'll go
 How do you leave the past behind
 When it keeps finding ways to get to your heart?
 It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out
 'Til you're torn apart, rent
 How can you connect in an age
 Where strangers, landlords, lovers
 Your own blood cells betray?
 What binds the fabric together
 When the raging, shifting winds of change
 Keep ripping away?
 Draw a line in the sand and then make a stand
 Use your camera to spar, use your guitar
 When they act tough, you call their bluff
 We're not gonna pay
 We're not gonna pay
 We're not gonna pay last year's rent
 This year's rent, next year's rent
 Rent, rent, rent, rent, rent
 We're not gonna pay rent
 'Cause everything is rent