Lyrics: Other People’s Failure
Album: John Wesley Harding’s New Deal
Artist: John Wesley Harding
 

Maybe you’re insecure
Neck deep in life’s manure
Maybe your heart’s impure
Inured to all small compensations
Maybe you’re born to lose
Could be caught out or confused
Wearing the condemned man’s shoes
Worn out, beyond a warning
There might be one million ills that ail ya
But why do you take pleasure in other people’s failure?

Each day since time began
You’ll meet a modest man
Who says he understands
Your plans, your dreams, your schemes, your feelings
But rather you than me
That’s his mentality
He’s a slave to gravity
And he watches laughing as you fall down
He doesn’t even have to nail ya
That’s why he takes pleasure in other people’s failure

It is a rule of thumb
Inside the coliseum
That when the time will come
We’d rather see the losers slaughtered
And no-one can resist
This vicarious kiss
It is our greatest bliss
The twist that gives success its flavour
A psychopathic psychedelia….
That’s why we take pleasure in other people’s failure