The Rat King

Record: Non-Secure Connection (album) .. 2020

Features: Bruce Hornsby (piano, vocals); Rob Moose (string arrangement, violin, viola)

From Bruce Hornsby on Apple Music:

“It’s not a requiem for the salesman specifically, but for malls and mall culture. The internet that kills businesses like the newspaper business and the record business is killing retail. It’s a song sung by a person who works at a store and is a high achiever, and they’re feting him, celebrating him with some award. But he’s obviously a guy who is dissatisfied with where he is. ‘This is what I do best, but I’ll do better,’ as the song says. I want it to be an empathetic view of this guy. He’s not a jerk, not an asshole. Not pompous or with a big ego—he’s just a guy, doing his job and doing it well. To me, it serves as a personal tale but also serves as a requiem for a certain area of American life and life around the world that is going away. We’re probably going to lose these things. I don’t know if anybody cares, but it is a fact.”

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