Professional Victim

VERSE 1

You're a bleating scapegoat,

stepping up to take the fall.

Your neck upon the block.

A rubber band around your balls.

You're not disposed to agitation,

your beliefs flip on a dime.

You confess before the allegation,

plead guilty before the crime.

CHORUS

They fire you without hesitation,

confirming your true occupation:

Professional victim.

VERSE 2

They take your rights, but you don't cry.

They break in your home, you step aside.

They steal your secrets and call you chump.

They take your 'chute, but you still jump.

If it's wrong, you are complicit.

If it's right, they cut you out.

Black is woke and white is good,

(says the man in the bedsheet hood).

CHORUS

They fire you without hesitation,

confirming your true occupation:

Professional victim.

Professional victim.

BRIDGE 1

When they deny your truths,

you embrace their lies.

When they tank your future,

their profits you subsidize.

VERSE 3

You take their meager pay-offs,

and gag on their hush money.

They stomp your name into the ground

and still you sacrifice your honey.

Where there's a mill, you're the grist.

Where there's a thumb, you're underneath.

Where there's cannon, you're the fodder.

Where there's an ass, you lick and pucker.

BRIDGE 2

Your compliance only heats their wrath,

as they cuff you on your front path,

tase you 'til you shit your pants,

then shoot you down in self-defence.

While cancers rot your insides,

your insurance is denied.

Tylenol is all you get,

because there is no safety net.

VERSE 4

Every day your ritual is denial.

You bend and kowtow, blind, servile.

You don't believe me when I tell you how

it's you today, your kids tomorrow!

Modern slave, zero-hour contractor,

triple-jobbing, polycrisis actor!

CHORUS

Professional victim!

Professional victim!

Professional victim!

VERSE 5 / OUTRO

You saw it coming, but you stood still.

A deer in headlights. A roadkill shill.

You've been marked for death since birth.

Always second while the nation's first.

Every day your ritual is denial.

You bend and kowtow, blind, servile.

You don't believe me when I tell you how

it's you today, your kids tomorrow!

Modern slave, zero-hour contractor,

triple-jobbing, polycrisis actor!

Professional victim!

Well lookie here... We got a special extra bonus. It's only a gosh darn BLUEGRASS cover version!

Author's Note

The lyrics are 100% my work, but the music, including the singer's voice, is produced by a generative AI called SUNO (with some tweaks and edits in GarageBand).

I am deeply conflicted about AI music, but I continue to be astounded by the quality and variety which SUNO produces, and even the "personality" it brings to the voice. The fact I can write some lyrics then have a full band perform them is literally a dream come true.

Since Vocal.Media is a showcase for writing – not music production – I feel OK using AI music as a way to illustrate my writing. The same applies to my use of AI imagery.

But I feel obliged to make this disclaimer: it's an unnecessary evil, and an ill omen for the future financial viability of all art.