The Enemy Is At Home (For The Fat Lady)

In the fighting
My life ended
The queen isn't here to state any flaws that make me resigned to it
My heart's not beating

This land's not our land
One year ago
Everyone from the rest of the world's waiting to take our jobs
So my heart said

You fool
You fool
You fool
You...

Ministers preaching
Papers screaming
Everyone from the rest of the world's waiting to attack us
Not us but them

notes: The parentheses denote two titles for this track.  On A La Guillotine and Red Sleeping Beauty, it was listed as For The Fat Lady, while on This Nelson Rockefeller, it was entitled The Enemy Is At Home.  When the greatest hits record came out, the two were merged into what we have here.

"Fat Lady" is likely an allusion to an old cliché that is increasingly uncommon since the early 90's, "It's not over until the fat lady sings," referring to an opera.

The lines about everyone from the rest of the world being out to steal our jobs and attack us recalls the paranoia of today in the US, what with the bogeymen of outsourcing and international terrorism.  Of course, these were very much present in the 1980's as well.

Malcolm:

The basic song (the bass part) was written exceptionally by John. Because of this, he wanted to choose the title, which he took from a J.D. Salinger story. Of course the title had nothing to do with the lyric I wrote. When we came to rerecord it, for the B-side of This Nelson Rockefeller, I wanted to give it a more relevant title. It's about a soldier who dies in a war and from the grave criticizes his own actions. 'The enemy is at home' was a Bolshevik slogan during World War One.

found on: A La Guillotine, Red Sleeping Beauty, This Nelson Rockefeller, That's All Very Well, But...

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