Cross It Out, Don't Rub It Clean
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
A record came in, plain and true
Said something happened, gave the who and the do
Then the source went quiet, no word at all
And the ledger downstream started to stall
Cross it out, don't rub it clean
Say it was, and say what it's been
Silence lies and deletion hides
Cross it out, let the truth abide
Some hand erased what the first line said
Swept the whole event clean out of its bed
Now the books balance but the story's gone
And nobody knows what got done and undone
Cross it out, don't rub it clean
Say it was, and say what it's been
Silence lies and deletion hides
Cross it out, let the truth abide
Mark the void, keep the date
Let the record carry its own mistake
A line struck through beats a hole in the page
When the reckoning comes for what changed
Cross it out, don't rub it clean
Say it was, and say what it's been
Silence lies and deletion hides
Cross it out, let the truth abide
Cross it out, don't rub it clean
Cross it out, let the truth abide
Cross it out
Cross it out
Cross it out, let the truth abide
The band
The Support Act
The house band, borrowing a familiar song's shape - the same line lengths, rhyme scheme and place for the hook - so it scans the way you expect. The words are entirely new and about the post, never about the original, and never quote it.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post A Cancelled Record Still Needs To Say So.
When a source system cancels or voids something it already sent downstream, the feed needs to carry that cancellation explicitly, not just quietly stop sending the record or delete it.
More by The Support Act
- Nobody Signed Off On This 4:16
- One Thing Moves Today 4:20
- Fewer Arguments 4:58
- Nobody Guessing 4:05