Day 19: Engineers of Temptation (Song-a-day January)

Day 19: The Engineers of Temptation 

By David Coile 

Part of my daily songwriting project for January 2025 

Lyrics: 

They act like they are gods 

And like we're barely human 

Born of flesh and blood 

And bred for their amusement 

They lure us with lights 

A thousand different types 

Of temptation 

We have five sensations 

Of seven deadly sins 

I've seen their calculations 

It's on this math their business hinges 

Dividing us with numbers 

Trying to drag us under 

With temptation 

Glory Hallelujah 

You know they're trying to fool ya 

Tell me, what's it to ya? 

Hey! 

There will come a time 

When we will come together 

To change the paradigm 

You know that this can't last forever 

We'll fight the profiteers 

Remove the engineers 

Of temptation 

*** 

Details: 

A weeklong boycott of Meta started today, and I decided to participate by logging out of Facebook-related platforms for the duration. I know it revolves around specific issues with misinformation, community moderation and what not-- which I think are important and complex problems-- but my decision had more to do with just bringing down the beast. Facebook is too big, and I hope the boycott bolsters some alternative social media platforms. And, in general, I support collective action of this sort as an effective counterpoint to big business. 

Anyway, the boycott and tomorrow's Presidential inauguration means that a new protest season has begun, so I figured it was a good time to flex my protest songwriting muscles. 

I'm far enough along in this project that I'm starting to repeat myself. The first chord progression I came up with sounded like several other songs, including some of the ones I've written this month. I'm also running out of unique guitar tricks and strumming patterns. However, I haven't done many tunes in a minor key, so I decided to give that a shot. 

I was running pretty late with writing this, and I was worried I wouldn't get it done by the end of the day, but I actually finished the last line at exactly midnight! So I'm still on track for writing a song each day this month...