2025 Competition Entry:

Cheap Lives by barry lawton

Genre

Folk

Artist

Website

Co-writer(s)

no

Performer(s)

Just me

Description

A response to the suffering and massacre currently taking place in Gaza

Bio

I am a amateur singer songwriter cocooned in the shell of a 30 plus year serving Rail Worker with only himself to blame. My two first albums had a polished professional recorded feel to them ( Norman Barratt God rest his soul is responsible for 90% of anything good on those albums) Enough To Go Around from 2000 and Brown Lipstick from the following year contain some of my best songs which I still play now. Between 2020 – 2023 four albums followed Rough Soul , Scruffy Boots , and the equally criminally under streamed Beaten Towns & Mucky Bridge. In addition to these albums there was the Forces of Capital EP and the single the ballad of 2022 and in 2023 the 3 track single Ease the fear. February 2025 will see the release of the current album Bonds Broken & Made. Live I play solo as I have for all of my performances, as or where ever possible.

Lyrics

Cheap lives
Babies under rubble
Children stripped of childhood before their time
Open graves
Bombs uniting families
In the belief that where their heading
Their gods will find a place for them thats safe

Cheap lives
Platitudes mean nothing
As the body count grows daily ever higher
Cheap lives
Massacres and sieges
Will fuel the hate and poor petrol on the fire

Its a twisted tale of history on a never ending loop
A cry of anguish mired beneath those telling words of truth
An endless call for justice a recognition of law
Its the demons in the shadows always making fast bucks out of war

Let me speak clearly
In words you can understand
In action is but complicity
With those who soak blood between their hands

Cheap lives
Genocide rampant
Face your gods and look them in the eyes
Liars and lies
Those who live by judgement
The ghosts of the slaughtered will come and pay you visits in the night

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