H.A.R.D. – Queen City Sounds and Art

HARD3_sm — H.A.R.D., photo courtesy the artists

Surface level take, H.A.R.D.’s “Thank God There Are People Like Me” is an exuberant song about being a moderately functional, but not consistently, drunk and romanticizing that lifestyle a bit. The chorus of “Thank god there are people like, people like me who relate when I drink,” in sing-a-long fashion seems to to give a pass to self-destructive behavior with an expression of how cool it is and the consequences for others is fine as long as you get away with it. But the song goes into the downside of living your life drinking like there’s no tomorrow because you’ve set your life up to stay wasted as often as possible. A lot of garage rock in recent years and the their ilk that seemed to say it can go on forever if you have the guts. The moment of truth, though, for this song is in a few lines toward the end of the song: “I say I’m a musician but I mainly sell drugs/I spend my nights drinking thinking I should give up/And I just keep talk, talk, talking and I never shut up.” Some of us have known people on that death spiral that romanticize being an unaccountable fuck-up because of some dubious cool factor to never being what you dream of or accomplishing the things that would do something toward legitimizing your cool status. Those people in “bands” who play for beer every week or less but can say they’re a musician and think that makes them an outlaw when their music isn’t legit enough for outlaw status. This song is about that and while it doesn’t condemn it does throw some humorous sarcasm because we either know those people or we’ve been those people but that maybe celebrating loserdom isn’t all its cracked up to be. Bill Hicks once said something about how your friends will christen your dumpster. This song has a similar message. After all, no one wants to be Dwight Yoakam’s character from Sling Blade even minus the domestic violence. Listen to “Thank God There Are People Like Me” on Soundcloud and follow H.A.R.D. at the links provided.