Written: June 2013. An attempt at writing my own “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.”
Lyrics rewritten July 2016. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while.
Characters by Tomi Zahnshtein. Where’s the picture of him screaming on a waterslide with a mushroom cloud behind him?
I’ve known Tomi since 2005, when I talked to him as a fan of his Neopets comic “The Pet Patrol Revolution.” Looking back, it wasn’t good in the slightest, but it laid the seeds of my interest in writing quirky characters and exploring different locales via snarky protagonists. Around that time, he was showcasing his new animation on Newgrounds – one that he called his best (he’s improved) – which was a music video for “My Happy Ending” but presented as a music video for his comic strip band the Morphing Potions. Little did I know that he’d do similar works like this throughout 2006 and 2007 under the Happy Endings series.
Happy Endings, in a nutshell, was a melodramatic series about a love square between four Usuls: Yellow, the popular girl; Right, a bad boy musician; Kevin, Yellow’s friend from childhood; and Becky, Yellow’s confidant and fangirl of Right. Yellow friendzones Kevin, who begins to date Becky as a means to extract information about Right from Yellow – so he can improve Yellow’s perception of him by being more like Right. Yellow, after a period of being swooned by Right, takes a break from him and checks out Kevin again, but realizes that they’re better off being friends. Becky attempts to get with Right at roughly the same time, but Yellow ends up being taken and Becky plans to kill both Right and Yellow. I can’t remember if she details the plan to Kevin, but I do know he cuts off all ties with Becky from there. So, on one of Yellow and Right’s dates in the park (in the dark, no less), Becky shoots Right, but is stopped by Kevin, giving Yellow enough time to take Right to the hospital and call the police. It’s too late – Right dies at the hospital. At the funeral, Yellow and Kevin have a newfound respect for one another and possibly start a relationship.
As you can see, it’s not too hot. Very by-the-numbers melodrama. But it’s good material for me to test out my ambitious songwriting!
The original song focused more on Right dying as opposed to telling a story. The written lyrics not only change the rhymes, but places in a story about Becky relentlessly pursuing Right and Yellow, culminating in her killing Right in the room and prompting Yellow to break her neck – and subsequently commenting on how empty the whole action was since killing Becky wasn’t going to bring back Right.