This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
- I Forgot That You Existed / This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things (Eras Tour, Cardiff)
- My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys / This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things (Eras Tour, Toronto)
Business rage: the settling of accounts with industry betrayers, the party hosted in good faith and the friendship that curdled into betrayal. Fury delivered with a smile and a glass raised: the performance of graciousness as the sharpest possible weapon.
“Friends don't try to trick you, get you on the phone and mind-twist you”
“Friends don't try to trick you, get you on the phone and mind-twist you”
“Everyone swimming in a champagne sea”
“So why'd you have to rain on my parade?”
“Everyone swimming in a champagne sea”
Gatsby-class champagne extravagance
“Everyone swimming in a champagne sea”
“Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names” — the last great american dynasty
Picked up by community readers, the champagne-filled pool of "swam with the big names" rhymes with the Gatsby-class excess of This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, where the parties run to a champagne sea and the speaker feels "so Gatsby for that whole year". The Fitzgerald register the hosts hear in this song resurfaces a few albums later, turned from biography into self-portrait.