Born to Shop

Born to Shop

How much do you earn in your daily grind?
For what products do you yearn
To buy your peace of mind?
How much did you spend?
Where will it all end?
Will you get an ideal home?
A partner and a telephone?
Will you ever get the time ?
Will you ever taste the wine
Made of the fruits of your hard labour?
Will you ever get to savour
The luxuries of the life of ease
You see in all the magazines?
Are you dreaming of a perfume
To make your life complete?
Or is there something else to buy
To make you the ‘brand new me’?
Can you get it cheaper?
Can you get it off the cuff?
Designer-made identities – if you’ve got enough –
If you’ve got the wonga then your black hair could be blonder
And if you’re clever, if you’re sly
You will know what things to buy
What to wear, what to eat, where to go, how to sleep
Who to talk to, what to say
What to think, how much to pay
For an idea or a feeling or some comfort, or a fuck
For a brand new way of living or if you really are in luck
Then your working life will all be spent
In pursuit of corporate dreams
And as you scrimp and save and buy
You’ll know what it really means
To be living, be consuming
Then one day when you die
You’ll leave all of your possessions, so you won’t have lived a lie.
And when your children ask you
Who, where, why and when and what
You can say “It’s all right darling,”
And tell them you were born to shop –
Born to shop, born to smoke
To eat baked beans and snort up coke
The birthright of the lucky few
The right to eat until we spew
The freedom to choose your addiction
Gambling, drinking or pulp fiction
Stop here and buy one
Did you know you needed it?
Get one for me Mum!
Feed them on a pile of shit
Learn the brand names all by rote
And the jingles, every note
Art of the times in advertising
For a brain dead public, is it surprising
The no-one remembers any more
What living life was like before
The advent of the multinational?
Oh, we have such privilege!
Just take a peek into my fridge
And see the labels gathered there
Feel the texture of my hair
Courtesy of Silvikrin
Our touch my soft Max Factor skin
Witness now my loss of weight
There’s Lean Cuisine upon my plate
But what of those without such luck?
A Telethon should raise a buck
Raise my social consciousness
With slogans on a trendy vest
Feed a man, plant a tree
Save a can – good old me!
I can be a caring consumer
But I need my car to get there sooner
I feel I have the right to choose
Which washing powder should I use?
In the great free West the right to buy
And for the rest an open sky.
Acid rain falls from a hole
Brand new deserts take their toll
Esso, Big Mac, Unilever
Put trademarks on our souls forever
But there is justice and we all share
The cancerous sun
And the poison air.