How the hell can a person
Go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening
And have nothing to say

The disappointment in that, and the bitterness, and the sense that this has been decades, and the emotional clarity within the colloquial language.

Prine and Adam Schlesinger were rigorous about songs; every rhyme and vocal phrase was about completing a picture. The writing has a colloquial tone, so it doesn’t feel like it was an effort, but that’s a mirage.

The clipped way he sings the “How the hell can a person” part of the last verse suggests a level of rage, maybe even a shortage of breath, even though that disrupts the flow of the melody. In the chorus, he sings on the one (confidence) & on the verses, behind the beat (caution).

Some of my friends were pained more by Schlesinger's loss than by Prine's. Adam radiated familiarity; he was the way-more-talented version of a common east coast/upper middle class/Jewish sensibility. I wrote a fourth-rate Fountains of Wayne song (which I asked Adam to mix; he

was very gracious about declining), and you could too. But I can't write a fourth-rate Prine song. That's about the loftiest level of songwriting. Also, though I hate that there won't be any more Prine concerts or albums*, he finished what he was here to do. Schlesinger didn't.

*There will probably be more Prine albums -- outtakes, a live record, maybe an array of finished mixes from his vault -- but you know what I mean by that.