This is a silly little song. A silly, fun, odd little song. But it actually contains a line that made me think, and that then made me realize something very profound and important.
First, the lyrics:
Shot his mother down
With a gun that he had found
Dragged her by the hair
And sat her in a chair
He knew that he was wrong
Now all his friends are gone
Terry’s only care
Was to be a millionaire
At school he played the fool
And on linoleum he ruled
The other children stared
And he would kick and pull their hair
He knew that he was wrong
Now all his friends are gone
Terry’s only care
Was to be a millionaire
Remember Terry’s song
And your future won’t be long
You’re happy where you are
Or as lonely as a star
Remember Terry’s song
Your future won’t be long
You’re happy where you are
Or as lonely as a star
You’re happy where you are
Or as lonely as a star
And Terry’s only care
Was To Be a Millionaire
Nice little song, no?
Scenes of murder and mayhem aside, the line that stuck out for me one night and on every subsequent listen is “You’re happy where you are or as lonely as a star”.
The album “Resident Alien”, from whence this track came, has a kind of special significance to me. I bought it back in 1995 when it came out, and I listened to it once, maybe twice. I loved the song “In the Meantime”, which is their biggest and pretty much only hit.
But later, on December 31, 1997 to be exact, I was feeling depressed and drunk on New Years Eve. I didn’t have anywhere to go, and my ex girlfriend had been gone for a while. I still wasn’t over her.
Anyway, I was listening to music and drinking beer when I decided to give this album a spin just before midnight. It was the last album I listened to in 1997. And I really loved it a lot. I started listening to the album some more, and out of some weird need for a tradition, for the next several years, that album was the last one I listened to on New Years Eve.
The last track, before the rather funny hidden track, is “To Be A Millionaire”. I really started thinking about that line “You’re happy where you are or as lonely as a star” every time I heard it. And I thought that maybe there’s some truth to it.
To cut to the chase, I learned that there is. Coming out of a suicidal depression that lasted for over 20 years has made me realize just how true it is. But I can still remember how it feels to be suicidally depressed – in which case it isn’t true at all. It’s hard to explain, and in any case, I don’t think the meaning I get from that line can be of much use to anyone else like it was to me.
So it turns out that hidden inside this little throwaway joke of a song was one of the most important life lessons I’ve had. It doesn’t really mean much by itself, but it sums up lots of what I’ve learned about happiness since I started actually having some.