Roger Waters

Amused to Death (HD) Music Video
Artist: Roger Waters
Album: Amused to Death
Released: 1991
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Doctor Doctor, what is wrong with me
This supermarket life is getting long
What is the heart life of a colour TV
What is the shelf life of a teenage queen
Ooh western woman
Ooh western girl
News hound sniffs the air
When Jessica Hahn goes down
He latches on to that symbol of detachment
Attracted by the peeling away of feeling
The celebrity of the abused shell, the belle
Ooh western woman
Ooh western girl
Ooh western woman
Ooh western girl
And the children on Melrose
Strut their stuff
Is absolute zero cold enough
And out in the valley, warm and clean
The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry
Down to the very last breath
Bartender what is wrong with me?
Why am I so out of breath?
The captain said excuse me ma'am
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
It has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We ohhed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then, the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry, no feelings left
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death (repeating)
(Switch channels)
"Years later, I saw Bill Hubbard's name on the memorial to the missing at Aras. And I... when I saw his name I was absolutely transfixed; it was as though he... he was now a human being instead of some sort of nightmarish memory of how I had to leave him, all those years ago. And I felt relieved, and ever since then I've felt happier about it, because always before, whenever I thought of him, I said to myself, 'Was there something else that I could have done?' And that always sort of worried me. And having seen him, and his name in the register - as you know in the memorials there's a little safe, there's a register in there with every name - and seeing his name and his name on the memorial; it sort of lightened my... heart, if you like."
"When was it that you saw his name on the memorial?"
"Ah, when I was eighty-seven, that would be the year, ninete... eighty-four, nineteen eighty-four."
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Roger Waters
Amused to Death lyrics © Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd.

Roger Waters started working on Amused to Death in 1987 when he first wrote "Perfect Sense."It was several years before the album was released.

Amused to Death was produced by Patrick Leonard, Waters, and was co-produced with Nick Griffiths in London at The Billiard Room, Olympic Studios, CTS Studios, Angel Recording Studios and Abbey Road Studios. The album was engineered by Hayden Bendall, Jerry Jordan, and Stephen McLaughlan and mixed by James Guthrie. The album is mixed in QSound to enhance the spatial feel of the audio, and the many sound effects on the album – rifle range ambience, sleigh-bells, cars, planes, distant horses, chirping crickets, and dogs – all make use of the 3-D facility.

Amused to Death is the only studio album by Waters to not have a tour supporting it, though some songs were performed during the In The Flesh and Us + Them tours.

The album is loosely organized around the idea of an ape randomly switching channels on a television, but explores numerous political and social themes, including critiques of the First Gulf War in "The Bravery of Being Out of Range" and "Perfect Sense."

The first track, "The Ballad of Bill Hubbard," features a recording of the voice of World War I veteran Alfred Razzell, a member of the Royal Fusiliers who describes his account of finding fellow soldier William "Bill" Hubbard, to whom the album is dedicated, severely wounded on the battlefield. After failed attempts to take him to safety, Razzell is forced to abandon him in no-man's land. The tale is continued at the end of the title track, at the very end of the album, providing a coda to the tragic story, with Razzell describing how he finally found peace.