Sunday Music: "Thoughts And Prayers" By Drive-By Truckers

A school shooting. A politically-motivated act of senseless violence. Really, any angry adult-acting-childish actions. When it happens, we all shudder, and then… “You are in our thoughts and prayers.” The intentions are good, but it still feels so bleak.

Maybe it was the bleakness of 2025. People are upset about politics again. And trade, and crashing markets, and - eggs, penguins, the everything and nothingness of computer, and all sorts of stuff. I really don’t know why the algorithm jumped to this song in my phone the other morning, but it did. It’s from 2020 but it feels like it could be about today.

Driving back from dropping my wife off at work, this song, that Patterson Hood wrote for the Drive-By Truckers in frustration over an armed adult showing up on his kid’s school playground, came on. It sort of got turned into a political anthem, but the core song, it’s about a much deeper feeling in the widening-gyre of frustrated American politics, right at crucial point in history.

On the day the adult showed up at his kids school, the awful outcome didn’t occur.

But if it had, you know what they’d say.

“You are in our thoughts and prayers.”

So he wrote a song about it, and he made it the chorus. You know, the part of the song, you keep coming back to and sing along with. Hood made the chorus, “Thoughts and Prayers.”

Or did he? Is it really the chorus? I’ll say no. I’ll say - this is a writer’s trick. When the song came on the other day, I forgot how well he pulled this off.

It shows up where the chorus is supposed to. It sounds as forlorn as the song feels like it should. It’s a perfect chorus. Nobody would have questioned anything if he let it be. And yet, after the second time the refrain appears, he kicks it up just a bit more by adding, “Glory, hallelujah / you are in our thoughts and prayers.”

He changes the chorus. Or, he builds on it. He turns a half-chorus into a full-chorus. He takes an empty platitude and he turns it into an artistic statement. Maybe not an action, but definitely an artistic statement.

That’s the real chorus. I can’t confirm it, but I’m pretty sure it’s a callback to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” You know that one - the “glory, glory, hallelujah” song.

That (much older song) came up during the Civil War on the abolitionists side. It later was adopted by the Civil Rights movement. It’s asking “why fight each other,” and reminding us that the only thing worth dying over (and therefore fighting for) is freedom. It’s not just an empty platitude either. It’s a call to action, set to a march.

In other words, don’t victimize. Don’t prey on the weak. Don’t create conflict where other means will do.

On one hand, that chorus is my favorite writer’s trick in the song. Hood gives us a false chorus first, to start singing along with. But then, a short while later, he gives it to us again, because he really gets singing with a twist and this call-back.

On the other hand, the bridge is the real show stopper. It’s not a repeated part. It’s a side story nested within the song. It’s about a misled person being confronted with reality. This is worth just sharing in its original form:

When I see adults acting like children, especially in violent ways, I wonder about this. I wonder how they thought this was the solution, like a flat-earther, and I assume some portion of their internal logic was misfiring. I have some empathy. Even if I hate the outcome. I see an empty-vessel, that got stuck on an empty-platitude of a chorus. The sad outcome is gravity closing the deal for the flat-earther, as opposed to them accepting they had accidentally picked a cause not worth dying for.

But there’s another redemption in this Truckers’ song and it’s in the turn of this bridge. You can listen to the full song if you want to hear it, but I wanted to call this part out.

We have choruses of empathy that are reduced to meaninglessness in what they say but what we fail to do.

We have choruses of fairness that are hard to speak, but important lessons to share, and repeat.

We alone are responsible for how we feel. We alone are responsible for how we act. If you’re feeling beat up by the world these days, own it up, find your people, and try to make some progress wherever you can.

The world feels ugly. Money is tight. Stress is high. This is 2025 in a nutshell. We see the flat-earthers, we see the rest of us, and maybe, in some cases, we aren’t truly positive who is who. That’s OK. What we have to orient ourselves towards, is what is worth the fight? What is worth singing about?

No platitudes. Don’t say, “I’ll call,” pick up the phone. Don’t say, “That feels wrong,” pick something to do about it. If the world feels ugly, make something beautiful. I don’t know that this post counts, but I’m trying to talk about anything else of meaning I can with anybody and everybody I can. I believe in it.

We need songs of action. We need songs to sing together, pointed in the right direction, in heart, if nothing else.

Creatively, look for these words. Look for these half-choruses you can turn into a full-chorus. Artistic expression is all about framing feelings in sharable ways.

Do what you can to share some honest, human, and humane feelings. It counts. Sing it loud, “Glory, hallelujah / you are in our thoughts and prayers.”