[Intro | Swing Piano Riff + Walking Bass | Vintage Crackle] [Verse 1 | Swing Feel | Triplet Phrasing] Nineteen hundred and the top one percent held it all Papers called it progress - kids in the factory halls Rockefeller counting barrels, Morgan buying up the banks Carnegie's libraries built on the union's back, no thanks Vanderbilt laid track across the stolen native plains Pinkertons with pistols putting down the worker claims They called 'em "captains" - "captains of industry," magazines But underneath the gold was just another machine Designed to funnel pennies into them platinum dreams While tenement families splitting a single can of beans [Pre-Chorus | Horn Swell | Building] History don't repeat - it rhymes with different names Same playbook, same families, just updated games [Chorus | Full Brass | Swing Bounce] They put America first - but tell me whose America? The one where you break your back and they collect the premium Economic royalists, back in their Liberty League Now the grandkids run the show - same old trick with a different thief [Verse 2 | Swing Feel | Historical Narrative] Thirty-four hit and Roosevelt said "enough" Social security, protections - wealthy called his bluff DuPont opened up his wallet, Sloan from GM too They formed the Liberty League to bury everything new Irénée dreamed of supermen - that ain't hyperbole He studied fascist movements overseas with jealousy They went to old Smedley - "Butler, half a million men would march" But the general said "I'm not your puppet" - blew apart their arch The papers buried it - just business as usual Their money made the story seem delusional [Pre-Chorus | Horn Swell] They called the New Deal "socialism" - sound familiar yet? Every social program since has faced the same reset [Chorus | Full Brass | Swing] They put America first - but tell me whose America? The one where you break your back and they collect the premium Economic royalists, back in their Liberty League Now the grandkids run the show - same old trick with a different thief [Bridge | Breakdown | Muted Trumpet Solo Over Spoken Word] Nineteen forty came around, "America First" was born Lindbergh at the podium, the isolationist horn Industrialists in the ranks keeping war profits safe While fascism spread through Europe - they wanted us to wait December seventh changed the tune, but the ideology stayed Buried in foundation money, in the think tanks that they made Through the sixties, seventies, Reagan came to play Deregulation celebration - New Deal stripped away [Verse 3 | Up-Tempo Swing | Present Day] Now we're back where we started and it's getting worse The top of the top got the Rockefeller purse Five families hold more than the robber baron days While they lecture us on bootstraps from their rocket-propelled haze Bezos paid nothing - not in two thousand seven, not eleven While the warehouse workers break themselves for minimum plus seven They put "America" in their mouths but keep the gold behind teeth Same speeches about liberty while they're buying up the seats The only thing that trickled down is contempt for those beneath And a hundred-year tradition of calling progress "defeat" [Chorus | Full Band | Final Push] They put America first - but tell me whose America? The one where you break your back and they collect the premium Economic royalists in their modern league Same bloodlines, same mindset - just a different brand of greed [Outro | Decrescendo | Vintage Fade] The Gilded Age never ended - just learned to speak in code "Job creators," "liberty" - same serfdom on the road Your granddaddy knew the feeling - your kids will know it too Unless we read the history and see the pattern through [End]
