Ben's Songs

I saw Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith in the theater the weekend it came out. It so happened that I also attended a live production of Sweeney Todd that same weekend. The similarities stood out to me, as they so often do, like a bright, hot blade in a dark place: both Sweeney and Vader start out in promising careers in which they owe their success to their skill with a gleaming blade; both are disgraced, transformed by a consuming rage and hatred, and return under a new name seeking vengeance; both murder their wives but blame others for it; and both leave behind children who have to sort it all out.

Surely this pun has been made many times — the challenge was to write a song as rich with irony and disappointment as the original.  The grammar alone should reveal who is singing.

Kipling's "Recessional" is a prayer for an empire on the edge of decline due to its overweening pride.  In the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the Old Republic and the Jedi Order stand at the edge of a similar precipice.

by Benjamin Newman, after "Recessional" by Rudyard Kipling
set to music by Leslie Fish

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My first multivalent song — that means it's about two subjects at the same time. Which two subjects? That's revealed at the end of the song (or you could read the tags). See if you can figure it out before then.

lyrics and music by Benjamin Newman