I Was Born in a Small Town by John Mellencamp

Where is the Love? Black Eyed Peas

I Know it's True ; Cause I Saw it On TV John Fogerty

They sent us home to watch the show comin’ on the little screen;

A man named ike was in the white house, big black limousine;
There were many shows to follow, from ’hooter’ to ’doodyville’,
Though I saw them all, I can’t recall which cartoon was real.

The coon-skin caps, Yankee bats, the "hound dog" man’s big start;
The A-bomb fears, Annette had ears, I lusted in my heart.
A young man from Boston set sail the New Frontier,
And we watched the dream dead-end in Dallas,
They buried innocence that year.

I know it’s true, oh so true, ’cause I saw it on tv.

We gathered round to hear the sound comin’ on the little screen,
The grief had passed, the old men laughed, and all the girls screamed
’cause four guys from England took us all by the hand,
It was time to laugh, time to sing, time to join the band.

But all too soon, we hit the moon, and covered up the sky;
They built their bombs, and aimed their guns, and still I don’t know why
The dominoes tumbled and big business roared;
Every night at six, they showed the pictures and counted up the score.

I know it’s true, oh so true, ’cause I saw it on tv.

The old man rocks among his dreams, a prisoner of the porch;
"the light," he says "at the end of the tunnel,
Was nothin’ but a burglar’s torch."
And them that was caught in the cover are all rich and free,
But they chained my mind to an endless tomb
When they took my only son from me.

I know it’s true, oh so true, ’cause I saw it on tv.
I know it’s true, oh so true, ’cause I saw it on tv.

Paradise by John Prine

John Fogerty's Version
My Polluted Kentucky Home by Silas House
Kentucky Coal Association Website

When I was a child my family would travel

down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born

and there's a backwards old town that's often remembered

So many times that my memories are worn.

Chorus:

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County

Down by the Green River where Paradise lay

Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking

Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River

To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill

Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols

But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

Repeat Chorus:

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel

And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land

Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken

Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

Repeat Chorus:

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River

Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam

I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'

Just five miles away from wherever I am.