New Release from Sir TalksALot “That Ain’t Great” Offers a Strong Clapback to MAGA

This is a song I’ve had on my creative To-Do list for over two years.  For various reasons, I haven’t completed it until recently, and releasing this song certainly has been cathartic.  I think, like many Americans, the tenor and rhetoric of our socio-political atmosphere the last decade or two has been tense and problematic.  We’ve seen lies, bullying, and borderline sociopathic behavior from a group of people who insist that their way will make us “great”. 

What a word, right?!  GREAT!  We grew up with Tony the Tiger telling us his sugary frosted diabetes in a box was GRRREEEAAAT! and since then we’ve had a strange relationship with that word.  What IS Great?  We may not know for sure yet.  But, I argue in the new single from Sir TalksALot, we know what Ain’t.  

In my podcast, social media content, and books, I explore the ethical dilemmas we face when climbing these hills of opinion from which we can’t begin to descend to any sense of reality.  The COVID pandemic was a prime example – seeing many Americans argue about wearing a mask rather than simply wearing one because it MIGHT help.  Beyond mandates, PPE for profit, or global shutdowns, the right thing to do in the moment was clear.  That isn’t a matter of opinion – it’s a matter of common sense.  If you’re in a room with sick people and someone comes up and says, “please wear this mask as a precaution until we know for sure it’s safe”, who bucks up to that person and says, “I don’t care about the safety of others!”?

As I began whittling people out of my life over the last several years – finally doing away with the social convention that just because we worked together for three years fifteen years ago, I need to keep you on my Facebook feed – I began realizing that a great deal of the stress, anxiety, and tension was lifted out of my life.  I no longer dreaded hearing from those people who shared racist, sexist, ignorant, homophobic, xenophobic social media posts – who no longer showed any restraint or ethics in the spread of misinformation.  I was more at peace than ever before.  

Thus began the writing of “That Ain’t Great” – as an anthem of permission to “kick ’em all outta your life”!  Setting healthy boundaries is always important.  That isn’t creating a echo chamber.  Those are different things altogether.  “That Ain’t Great” is the perfect upbeat, bouncy, happy-sounding song with a lot of tongue-in-cheek snark, sarcasm, and flat out condemnation of what my 5th grade teacher Mr. Williams would call “stinkin’ thinkin'”.