Tell me how it used to

How it used to

How it used to be



[Adam Vida]

One time, a psychic had told me something 'bout my future life

How I would live to be a hundred with my future wife

Surrounded by my great grandchildren

Reading the funnies and telling ‘em stories

'Bout how things were different in my 20’s, like:

"Gather round, you two, shut off the TV

I got a story, and maybe you youngins might not believe me

But 80 years ago, the world wasn’t so kind, then

Now it sounds silly but I remember a time when

There was so many of us in love with one another

And tried to show it but couldn’t 'cuz they wouldn’t let a pair of people

Share a life together 'cuz they said it was evil and against the law

But them laws wasn’t fair or equal

People debated and shouted and demonstrated and spouted hatred

Instead of trying to have a conversation about it

But soon it led us to having celebrations about it

Look at what my generation sprouted" (Marriage is legal!)

Then the psychic took her small fee

I thought about the way things were before me

And how every generation gets a little more free

I felt hope thinking how things could all be

In eighty years I guess we gon' see when our grandkids saying to us



[Chorus]

Tell me how it used to be

Cause we’ve come so far

Tell me how it used to be

Tell me how it used to

How it used to

How it used to be



[Watsky]

"Grandpa, is it true what they say?

That way back in the day day

You know? Like way back, like mad long

That President Riff-Raff used to write rap songs?

And I heard the people lit nicotine

But they weren’t allowed their sweet, sweet sticky green

And they let a kid be shipped to Iraq

But they wouldn’t let him sip on a whiskey when he was back!"



Yep, that’s back when life was a terminal illness

Before that doctors learned that we came

With a little switch every person turned in their brains

When life was overwhelming and so we turned from the pain

Back when slums grew in the shadows

Of a 170 story chateaus

And the people under ‘em fought

For the crumbs that fell from the windows up at the top

We claimed freedom but our elections were bought

By a high-spitting executive, not a second of thought

Back when corporations were people but people weren’t even people

And people just weren’t connecting the dots



[Chorus]

Tell me how it used to be

Cause we’ve come so far

Tell me how it used to be

Tell me how it used to

How it used to

How it used to be



[Watsky]

People would hate you over what spirit you prayed to

You talk and they wouldn’t hear it

They fear it and decapitate you

And back in the states all we’re doing is just always say that they're doing

Placing humans in boxes over what appearance they're near to



[Adam Vida]

I fill in boxes, they said inside of it was a future

They bomb a school full of students and do away the computers

Technology, we can use it on mother earth to improve her

Instead we steady abuse her but was it worth the maneuver?



[Watsky]

Who are we kidding? You and me didn’t ruin the system

But soon the kids who crawled out of the sewers grew to be different



[Adam Vida]

Brutally killing for power’s not our true intuition

So we flip the script now we living with the newest traditions



[Watsky]

Smashing the walls and dancing and drinking

Wine in the kitchen



[Adam Vida]

Kissing and hugging and laughing

Fuck it we shining and winning



[Watsky]

Women and men looking back and telling



[Adam Vida]

Reminding the children of how it

[Watsky]

How it

[Adam Vida]

How it How it

How it How it

How it How it

How it