Why Must You Be So Mean?

“Why Must You Be So Mean” is the most direct assault on technology on The Hard Feelings, featuring Johnny Nason’s flying fingers on the mandolin AND on the lead guitar.

The end of the song where I’d get the band and the audience to yell at me to “shut up” is such a weird thing to contemplate now. I guess I had been so overwhelmingly loved and supported throughout my life that I took some pleasure in making myself the target of visceral derision from friends and strangers or… maybe visceral derision is what I learned from my family and subsequent friends and lovers to be the most “honest” form of love or…maybe it was just a zeitgeist thing, and you can find the same kind of self-flagelating humor in “The Ben Stiller Show” and the work of Charlie Kauffman, as well in the “suicides” of Elliott Smith & Kurt Cobain. Funny stuff.

The question of why someone would want to be mean still plagues me, as do my own regrets and questions about the times when I have been mean and hung up on somebody else’s machine.

Written by Andras Jones
Engineered by Mike Deneen, Colin Mahoney & Earle Mankey

Andras Jones – Vocals & Acoustic Guitar
John Nason – Mandolin, Electric Guitar, & Backing Vocal
Marshall Thompson – Piano, Keyboards & Backing Vocals
R. Walt Vincent – Bass Guitar
Colin Mahoney – Drums