Will Varley - Weddings and Wars

'Bang' goes the big bang in the darkness and thunder
Adam and Eve were strands of bacteria
Blind we crawled with the birds and the bees
Few years on we climbed down from the trees
And were standin' in Africa, lookin' at the sky
Saying "Why we're here? What happens when we die?"
We used God as a word for the things we can't see
Now put on some clothes and let's wait for TV

Well it doesn't take long till we're painting caves
Makin' some men kings and other men slaves
Sayin' "God is our reason and God is our leader
God spoke to me and he told me to kill ya."

We spread like a virus to every dark corner
Greeks and romans are layin' down borders
The slaves and the soldiers, the queens and the kings
Wherever they were, they all used to sing:

Birth, death, weddings and wars
That's all we are good for
If all of the past was played as a song
Our lives are a beat of the drum

Invading, enslaving, then trading the plunder
Tobaco and opium, tea leaves and sugar
Empires built with the bones of the slaughtered
A barrel of booze in return for your daughters and

Birth, death, weddings and wars
Naissance, décès, mariage et guerre
Above the same earth, beneath the same stars
You can't hide the beast that we are

Well by the dark ages we're gettin' into guns
Still fightin' over god and who's got the right ones
Still singin' and dancin', now we're paintin' on canvas
Pasting the time with our sex and our violence

The west gets rich, it strangles the earth
Romeo and Juliet can't make it work
Factories, A-Bombs and Flying-Machines
Finally someone invents the TV

And it's birth, death, weddings and wars
Naissance, décès, mariage et guerre
Above the same earth, beneath the same stars
You can't hide the beast that we are

Instead of hunting now we go to Tescos
Instead of talking now we wear headphones
Instead of mountains we're heading for Mars
Instead of God we have credit cards

And we're still here two thousand and somethin'
No peace, economy is crashing
Singin' and dancin' and looking at the sky, sayin'
"Why are we here? What happens when we die?"
Singing birth, death, weddings and wars
That's all we're good for
If all of the past was played as a song
Then our lives are a beat of the drum
Then our lives are a beat of the drum