from the late Australian songwriter Kevin Baker - Superstar video

I still hear my mother whistling as she hung clothes on the line
While our neighbour did the Monday wash and sang away the time
Down the road on a building lot where hammers kept the beat
Workmen sang and shared their lunch with the boy from up the street
And the Baker's cart and the Rabbito came trading to a tune
As we lived to our own music morning night and afternoon.

CHORUS - But now you've got to be a superstar if you want to sing a song
If they catch you quietly singing people think there's something wrong
Somehow we lost the right to sing: it almost seem a crime
To share the things you care about in music, words and rhyme.

I hear echoes of my father in the songs he used to know
Of love and work and freedom; the memories start to flow
And my mother played an old squeeze-box as her people had before
And friends would visit friends and bring their songs in through the door.
And no-one was at all surprised or thought it indiscreet
If the friendly sound of music were to spill out on the street.

CHORUS

But now we get our music with an electronic sound
In accents strange and foreign that aren't heard on our home ground
It's slick and flash but hasn't got a thing to do with me
But it clogs up all our radios and floods out from TV
And I can't help looking back to when we thought we all belonged
Before we lost our voices and bought other people's songs.

CHORUS