Try Too Hard

I first wrote this as a message to an old friend.  I realized it was directed my whole generation, politicians, television, American culture, Capitalism itself, men in general, and myself as a younger man.  It is a critique of what happened to Rock music after 1966, how it got more elaborated, exaggerated  and theatricalized until it became merely another grotesque and worthless form of entertainment.  

Try Too Hard

I really wanna level with you.
    You try too hard
I never could believe in you 
    cause you try too hard.
You’re like a bull in a china shop.
Try to see where you are, dial it down, just stop.
If you wanna please me, please me, 
    please don’t be trying so hard.

I can see you’re ready to fight.
    You try too hard.
You’re never gonna get it right
    cause you try too hard.
You wanna make a big show.
You wanna believe that you know what you’re doin’
but the dirty little facts don’t make it so,
    cause you try too hard.

(Too hard.)

    How we gonna make a connection
    when you’re moving in a different direction,
    and you can’t seem to see the relation
    in what you do, what you say, 
    now everybody’s gonna pay.

I coulda been a winner with you
    but you try too hard.
I woulda gone the distance with you 
    but you try too hard.
Everything was over rehearsed,
‘n always playin’ out in reverse,
and I could count on you to make it worse,
    ‘cause you tried too hard.

You’ve always been a major offender
when you tell me that you cannot remember.
But now I know you’re just a pretender
Reversing what you say. 
When you gonna go away?

You tell me there was no other choice.
    You tryin’ too hard.
I can hear the strain in your voice.
    You tryin’ too hard.
You used to be a pretty good liar,
but now your double a’s are crossing my wires,
and your tweakin’s only making me tired.
    You try too hard.

 Copyright © 2006, 2014 by David Larstein, all rights reserved.

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