DEVO (1988): Some Things Never Change
2"Some Things Never Change" is a CyberPunk Song from Devo's 1988 album "Total Devo".
"Some Things Never Change" contains a portion of lyrics from an earlier composition entitled "Some Things Don't Change", which was rejected from their previous album, Shout, and later appeared on the compilation album Recombo DNA in 2000. The song also paraphrases a lyric from the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" and appeared in Interplay's C64 adventure game, Neuromancer, itself an adaptation of the 1984 novel of the same name by William Gibson.
"The Shadow" has lyrics that contain numerous references to literary works such as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The chorus is partially lifted from T. S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" and it incorporates and paraphrases the catchphrase from the serials following the character the Shadow ("Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men?/The shadow knows!").
Lyric:
Some things never change
Hang your head
I saw the news today o boy
A thousand stories that we've seen before
Small minds play at some big time games
And everybody else pays
Make no mistake they're on the take
They like to keep it that way
Some things never change
I saw the light today o boy
It come on flashing bright in red and blue
The man steps in with a terminal grin
Blue skies turn to grey
Young men die and children cry
Why is it always the same
Life must be eaten
Or at least bitten into
To get past the surface
The moment of truth
You know when its right
Its sweet deep inside
Its real and its better
That some things don't change
I saw the news today o boy
A thousand pictures of the lies we live
Small minds play at some big time games
And everybody else pays
They're on the take and they don't give breaks
They like to take it away
Some things never change
Hang your head