South Sea Bubble

Lyrics

[Intro]
Seventeen hundred and twenty.
A tale of two cities, London and Paris.
A tale of two fevers, burning on the same bad fuel.
Across the Channel, John Law's paper dream was collapsing.
And in Exchange Alley, our own was just reaching its peak.

[Verse 1]
It began with a sensible notion, back in '11.
Robert Harley's plan to manage the nation's debt.
The South Sea Company, a charter sealed by the crown.
A monopoly granted on all trade with Spanish America.
The promise whispered in coffee houses: mountains of silver, rivers of gold.
They forgot to mention the Treaty of Utrecht.
They forgot to mention the one ship a year. A single ship.
The Asiento. A detail lost in the roar of the crowd.

[Chorus]
And the price of the paper went up.
Not the price of the cargo, for there was no cargo.
Not the price of the silver, for there was no silver.
Just the price of the promise.
The value of the story, told from man to man in the smog of Change Alley.
A thousand pounds for a share in a ghost ship, on a phantom sea.

[Verse 2]
John Blunt, the goldsmith, he knew his craft.
Not in metal, but in men.
He sold them the sky and they paid him in coin.
Lords and merchants, ladies and maids.
Even Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint.
A man who weighed the stars.
He bought, he sold, he walked away with seven thousand pounds.
But the fever is a sickness. It pulls you back.
He saw his friends getting richer, and he plunged back in.

[Chorus]
And the price of the paper went up.
Not the price of the cargo, for there was no cargo.
Not the price of the silver, for there was no silver.
Just the price of the promise.
The value of the story, told from man to man in the smog of Change Alley.
A thousand pounds for a share in a ghost ship, on a phantom sea.

[Bridge]
Then came September.
A chill in the air.
He said, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies...
but not the madness of people."
Twenty thousand pounds.
Evaporated. Gone like the morning fog on the Thames.
The value of a story when the story ends.

[Outro]
And so the Bubble burst.
As all bubbles must.
The South Sea. The Mississippi. The Tulip.
The names change. The year changes.
The paper changes.
But the madness... the madness of people... remains.