This is a cheesy 80's-style power ballad about a man's unusual strategy for coping with a breakup. Given the subject matter, though, it's SUPPOSED to be cheesy!

Tacos At Midnight

Not to be confused with the Great White song of the same name.

This song is based on personal experience; I wrote it several years ago. It's a rockabilly-style song, in the same vein as ELO's "Hold On Tight", and a lot of songs by The Eagles, Poco, etc.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

ONE last song before I go on vacation tomorrow!

I wrote this one after improvising on my new Yamaha keyboard. I started playing around with the piano riff from U2's "The Sweetest Thing", and ended up taking it in a very different direction.

The song starts out as a soft piano ballad (similar to A Great Big World) but then ramps up into an upbeat folk/rock/classical hybrid style, more reminiscent of the band Of Monsters And Men.

Female vocals appear at around the two-minute mark. (I didn't actually have a female vocalist available to record this demo with, so I just did both parts myself. Which lyrics are for which parts are shown below).

The song slows down at the end, with the coda sounding like the intro.

There are some references to personal experiences in here (for instance, the labyrinth reference is because I really loved mazes as a kid, but it's also a reference to how being on the autism spectrum might make being in a relationship more difficult for the other person involved).

----

"My Love"
Music and lyrics by Mason Green

When will she
Come to me
I’ll wait and see
My love

I’m on my own
Pure unknown
A rolling stone
My love

When she comes my way
Don’t know what to say
But soon enough she’s gone
And my life goes on

The girl I thought that I would find
Was all in my mind 

(TEMPO UP)

I wait for you
While stars go blue
So please come through
My love

I say a prayer
That somewhere
Way out there’s
My love

Often I believed
But I was deceived
Others broke my heart
So again I’ll start

The girl I thought that I would find
Was all in my mind 

F: He is like a labyrinth, with passageways of stone
I’ll have to find the way to his heart

M: Even I don’t understand myself all of the time
I need someone who can break these walls apart

M: When I come undone
If you can be the one
Who fixes me like new
Then all I want is you

F: A challenge I’ll set out to win
Here’s where we begin

M: She is like a temple, beautiful and sacred
I’m afraid that I’m not good enough for her

F: There’s something he is hiding, and I’m not sure what it is
It isn’t something easy to infer

M&F: But something in (his/her) eyes
Makes me think that I
Just can’t let (him/her) go
I want (him/her) to know
My love

M&F: We are like the ocean….
Wherever we may roll
We’ll always come to shore
My love

Like the prairie at dawn
We’ll go on and on
We’ll run this marathon
My love

(TEMPO DOWN)

M&F: Now (he/she)’s here
And it’s clear
Have no fear
My love

My Love

I was interning at a factory once and they were having me do extremely repetitive tasks (which I ended up not being too good at). In order to stay focused I made up a melody to hum to myself, sort of like how sailors used to sing sea shanties. That's how this song originated; it's my own personal work song.

Eventually I wrote lyrics for it as well. I suppose this could be considered a drinking song, which is interesting, because I don't drink. I always imagine this song being performed in a bar with a bunch of drunk people taking turns singing the lines. Maybe it'd even be a good song to use in a musical.

LYRICS:

"I just lost my job today, ah ah ah ah ah ah
I got bills I gotta pay, ah ah ah ah ah ah
My wife left and took the kids, ah ah ah ah ah ah
My professor flipped his lid, ah ah ah ah ah ah

Every time it’s just the same
We’re all here for fun and games

They could send me off to jail, ah ah ah ah ah ah
I’m so fat, I’m like a whale, ah ah ah ah ah ah
My poor cat just bit the dust, ah ah ah ah ah ah
This old car is full of rust, ah ah ah ah ah ah

Every time it’s just the same
We’re all here for fun and games

Everybody laughs at me, ah ah ah ah ah ah
Today I got stung by a bee, ah ah ah ah ah ah
I thought I could be a star, ah ah ah ah ah ah
But now my job is washing cars, ah ah ah ah ah ah

Every time it’s just the same
We’re all here for fun and games

Every time it’s just the same
We’re all here for fun and games”

Fun And Games

This song is very Fleetwood Mac-ish. I could especially imagine Christine McVie singing lead on this one.

I was an aquarium hobbyist when I was younger. That partly inspired the lyrics, but there's also a pretty obvious Dory reference in here too.

LYRICS:

Love is hard, I’ll tell you why
It doesn’t just fall from the sky
Or hit you like a magic spell
You have to feed it, tend it well

That’s what I’ve been trying to do for you
But somehow something’s isn’t getting through

We just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Like fish in the aquarium
Just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Going round in circles
We just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Never getting anywhere
We just keep swimming
Just keep swimming

Sometimes I ask the stars above
If you’re the same person I used to love
We just keep sailing past like ships in the night
We don’t see eye to eye, it just isn’t right

Must this good thing end, it makes me despair
There might be something that we just can’t repair

We just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Like fish in the aquarium
Just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Going round in circles
We just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Never getting anywhere
We just keep swimming
Just keep swimming

Can we find a way back onto solid ground
Or must we keep swimming round and round and round

We just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Like fish in the aquarium
Just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Going round in circles
We just keep swimming (just keep swimming)
Never getting anywhere
We just keep swimming
Just keep swimming

Aquarium

This is a 70s style country-rock song, reminiscent of groups like Poco (especially "Heart of the Night"), and the Eagles ("The Long Run").

The lyrics have more of a Steely Dan snark to them. Steely Dan liked to poke fun at hippies and left-wing idealism (for instance, in "Only A Fool Would Say That"). This song does the same but focuses on the opposite end of the spectrum: conspiracy theorists and alt-right types.

This song was inspired by two personal experiences: one of them was having a friend who kept posting offensive stuff on Facebook and said he didn't care what anybody thought.

The other was back in 2009. I had the privilege of eating at a Baker's Square, where a bunch of very old men who were part of the Flat Earth Society had reserved a table and were holding a meeting. They had a placard on the table that said: "FLAT EARTH SOCIETY - Nothing that you say will convince us we're wrong". This is the second song I've written that references that incident.

LYRICS:

You think that very few people know the real truth
No point in arguing
You think the Zeitgeist movie has all the proof
No point in arguing

You say the government took down the towers
It's ruled by aliens with super powers
And any argument we'd have would just go on and on
'Cause nothing that I say will convince you that you're wrong

You think the world is flat
No point in arguing
And Alex Jones is where it's at
No point in arguing

You think things were so much better
Five hundred years in the past
I'd like a time machine to send you back
And see how long you'd last
But there's no getting through
There's no getting through to you

You say you're doing fine
It's everybody else who've lost their minds

You've got a website that you made yourself
No point in arguing
And David Icke books fill your bottom shelf
No point in arguing

Yeah you're a seeker for truth
Aren't we all
But sometimes when you look for it
You just might fall
Off the edge of reality
And with your mentality
There's no getting through
There's no getting through to you

You think we never made it too the moon or space
You think that there's a superior race
And you just so happen to be part of it, hey
Funny how it always turns out that way

You think that everyone is brainwashed, except for you
No point in arguing
And you gotta take the red pill to know what to do
No point in arguing

You think that women run the world, and that's a fact
So all men now need to rise up and take the power back
I think I saw you cross over sanity's event horizon
So from here on out I guess I'll be surmising
That there's no getting through
There's no getting through to you

No Point in Arguing

I wrote "Ava" way back in 2009 but never recorded it until now. This song was influenced in particular by the Kinks' "Lola" and the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again". It's a British Invasion/space-rock type of thing. Very retro, and yet also futuristic.

If I'd had a sister, my parents would have named her Ava. That's where I got the idea for the name; it also seemed like a good name for a robot at the time.

People might think this song was based on the movie Ex Machina, but I wrote it six years before that movie came out, so any similarities are merely coincidental!

-----

The other night I landed my spaceship
At that brand-new disco on Mars
That plays the hottest new Venutian jive

And has a fifty-million-dollar cover charge
Well that's when I saw her sittin' next to me
Her eyes almost seemed to glow
Her skin shone as bright as a mirror in the night
She was more beautiful than you could possibly know

Ava, oh Ava
Don't you know how you make me feel
Ava, oh Ava
You're so beautiful you almost don't seem real

Well the moment I laid eyes on her
I knew this was an instant romance
So I told her, "hey there, Ava darling
Why don't we get up and dance"

Well I'm not the world's best dancer
But my Ava's like no one you've ever seen
'Cause she moves so flawlessly, with perfect rhythm
Like the kind you'd expect from a machine

Ava, oh Ava
Your voice is like electron blue
Ava, oh Ava
Just like a magnet, I'm attracted to you

At the bar 'bout half an hour later
She ordered vegetarian beef
And I asked why she didn't just ask for a burger
And she said her fuel cells can't handle meat

Well then I was just a little bit puzzled
Then she said, "can you drive me home?"
'Cause it's getting late at night, and it just seems right
And I'm programmed not to go out at night alone

Ava, oh Ava
Your skin is so lovably cold
Ava, oh Ava
Don't put your circuits on overload

Oh AVA! My oh my
You're a high-tech Pinocchietta
Who can never lie
Go electric!

(extended solo)

Well the moral of this story is as follows
It doesn't matter what planet you're on
It doesn't matter if you think in zeroes and ones
Or if you're made of carbon or silicon

'Cause there's a lot that I've learned from my Ava
My polymer composite girl
I've learned that I can be a digital man
In a very, very analog world

Ava, oh Ava
Don't you know how you make me feel
Ava, oh Ava
You're so beautiful you almost don't seem real
Ava, oh Ava
Ava, oh Ava
Ava, oh Ava
(fade out)

"The Open Road" is based on a rhythm that I once heard in a dream.

It took me a while to figure out that my "dream rhythm" is actually a compound quintuple meter (5/8 time!) It actually sounds really catchy though, although it can be tricky to sing.

I think it might end up being a trademark for me. It can be thought of as a 5/8 variant of the Bo Diddley beat (I've already used it on one other song, and will likely keep using it in the future), so maybe it'll end up being named for me as well. Who knows?

LYRICS:

I knew a girl named Daphne
She took my heart away
Now here I am on the open road
And there I’m gonna stay

Life is like a bowl of cherries
Sometimes it’s the pits
Life is like a box of chocolates
You don’t know what you’ll get

Her words were sweet as honey
She had me in her power
All she wanted was my money
Then my sweet honey turned sour

CHORUS

Sometimes life sneaks up on you
Throws you curves you don’t expect
Some succeed in all they do
The rest of us get no respect

The wheel of fortune spins around
Where it stops you can’t control
So pick yourself up off the ground
You’ve got to learn to let it roll

CHORUS

Equal opportunity
Is a story that we share
To make ourselves to believe
That this world of ours is fair

But the truth is plain as day
And it goes for everyone
Things don’t always go your way
And there’s nothing you could have done

CHORUS

The players gonna play
And the haters gonna hate
And I will keep on living day by day
That’s how I operate

CHORUS

The Open Road

If Ace of Base had been a hard rock band, they might have put out songs like this. It's got the same pop-reggae groove their songs had, but a much darker sound.

The lyrics were inspired by a former coworker of mine who all of the sudden started giving me dirty looks and the silent treatment at work. I had no idea why, and it led me to a place of social anxiety and paranoia. I decided to explore these feelings in a song.

-----

I see you every day
But you just look away
Your smile is now a scowl
And in the air it’s foul
Whatever happened to
The friendly face I knew
Why’s everything so tense
It really makes no sense

All that I get is a room full of steam
All that I get is a room full of steam
Day after day, it’s the same old theme
All that I get is a room full of steam, HEY!

What did I say or do
What did I put you through
To make you act like this
Like something is amiss
You know it stings like salt
I don’t think I’m at fault
Wish I could leave this place
But here I’m stuck in space

All that I get is a room full of steam
All that I get is a room full of steam
Day after day, it’s the same old theme
All that I get is a room full of steam, HEY!

Snap out of it
Snap out of it
Snap out of it
Before we go insane

All that I get is a room full of steam
All that I get is a room full of steam
Day after day, it’s the same old theme
When I look into your eyes

Room Full Of Steam

This world’s not a place
I’ve ever felt at home
I always get lost in the maze
The past was full of trials
And the future looks bleak
And these are such uncertain days

But I know
Somewhere out beyond the blue
There’s a house on a hill
With my name on it still

Well the world’s changing fast
And it’s starting to rain
I’m all soaking wet, here’s your proof
I’m stuck in the swamp
That has never been drained
There’s only one thing I can do
I come back to the river of truth

Well the earth’s getting hot
And the politics burns
And a lover is yet to be found
And my work is a chore
And my life is a bore
And troubles keep coming around

But I know
Somewhere out beyond the blue
That I’ve still got a friend
Who’ll be there to the end

Well the world’s changing fast
And it’s starting to rain
I’m all soaking wet, here’s your proof
I’m stuck in the swamp
That has never been drained
There’s only one thing I can do
I come back to the river of truth

And it’s passing me by
Or so I’ve been told
And I’m not yet thirty
But still I feel old

And the world’s changing fast
And it’s starting to rain
I’m all soaking wet, here’s your proof
I’m stuck in the swamp
That has never been drained
There’s only one thing I can do
I come back to the river of truth

River of Truth

My name is Mason Green and I’ve been writing songs since 2006. I’ve recorded a few rough demos but only this year (2020) have I felt confident enough to seriously pursue getting my songs recorded in the studio.

This is in part due to having let go from a previous job (which made me realize I would probably never make it in the Nanoscience Technology field I got a degree in), and partly due to my other day job suddenly becoming very high-risk due to the coronavirus outbreak. Becoming a content creator suddenly seems like a much better and safer option and it’s what I was born to do.

The Mason Green Experience

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