Live Like We're Dying by Kris Allen

First impressions: "Sometimes we fall down, can't get back up." sounds like someone needs Life Alert . This song is about elderly people and how we should imitate them (in a respectful, subtle way) whenever possible. This is supported by the second line "We're hiding behind skin that's too tough." Here, Allen artfully mocks the wrinkly, tough skin of the elderly while also remaining in their favor by including himslef in the group of people with tough skin. This seems to be a Colbert-esque song which mocs old people right to their face.

If this song is indeed about old people, then someone old in his life did not openly express their love for him. He woefully asks "How come we don't say I love you enough?" Yes, grandma, why do you withhold your "I love you's" and instead only give me awesome presents and fresh baked cookies? I want love, not tasty morsels!

The next verse mocks the elderly's inability to feed themselves saying "Our hearts are hungry for a food that won't come/And we could make a feast from these crumbs." The elderly (as any old person will tell you) ate very little during the great depression and WWII. They made meals of shoe leather, tree bark, and young children. This resourceful generation only needs a crumb to survive, but Allen, much like the Grinch, has taken everything from them, leaving so little that even the elderly complain (and we all know how infrequently they do that).

The next few lines describe staring down the barrel of a gun and your life flashing before your eyes. This is presumably hunger-induced mass suicide, effectively eliminating an entire generation. And, again mocking old people, Allen taunts them with opportunity passed, saying "What do you wish that you would have done?" Yeah, old man, now that your joints all ache, don't you wish you had skydived when you had the chance? Sucker.

In the fourth verse we finally get to the title line of the song "[we've] gotta live like we're dying." To help us understand what this means, I think a checklist is in order. Here are a few things that are necessary to be old and dying:

[note: this order is more or less in order. Thus, the first half is necessary to ensure you're acting old, and the second half is to ensure you're living your life like you're dying.]

• Have dial-up internet.
• Read the newspaper.
• Pay for everything by check.
• Have that distinct old person smell.
• Eat all meals before 4:30 pm.
• Wear pajama pants for all occasions.
• Move to Florida to live with other old people.
• Consolidate all your pills into one easy to remember place, such as a pill box.
• Knit (for women), play cirbbage/dominos/checkers (for men).
• Never drive over 20 mph.
• Drive an Oldsmobile or Cadillac.
• Complain about "darn kids," and blame them for the woes of the world and your own life failures.
• Compare everything you see to how it was when you were the age of the person you're talking to.
• Make the bed and the toilet interchangeable.
• Require oxygen tanks to breath.
• Ride an awesome scooter
• Eat you meals through a straw.
• Forget your loved ones names.
• Make a will.
• Live the rest of your life in an Alzheimer's induced blissful ignorance.

WIth the list well on its way, we can move on. After showing off his math skills and thus proving he is not elderly, Allen moves into some more literal examples of dying. He says "And if your plane fell out of the skies/Who would you call with your last goodbye?" I think the better question is what carrier do you have that your cell reception is reliable at 30,000 ft and falling? Also, maybe the phone was the reason for the crash. Just saying. He also says "you never see the crash until it's head on."

The last, oh, 60% of the song is just a repeat of what came before. This makes me wonder if Allen is indeed elderly. He seems oblivious to the fact that he's repeating himself over and over and over again. I think if he took the Wii Fit true age test he'd be at least 55. Let's examine the evidence: he is in a non-rap badn. Strike one for the young hypothesis. He repeats himself and wrote an entire song about old people. What's the first thing you do in highschool when someone tries to say you're a nerd? You make fun of nerds. But in the end, the kids are always right. Ergo, Allen is trying to disown his own oldness, when in fact he is old. Two more strikes and boom goes the old dynamite.

This song makes me happy. Finally, old people get ripped a new one. They've been getting a free ride too long just because they "worked hard" and "paid their dues" and "just want to eat in peace without getting made fun of." If you ask me, we need more of this. No one is immune. toddlers: laziest people in the world. Housecats: aspire to be something of substance, maybe a lion. The list goes on, but I'm glad we can cross old people off of it. Thank you Kris Allen. now go learn how to spell your name.