Unstable Compound

Lyrics

[Intro]
(bubbling, a small explosion, delighted cackle)
It's SUPPOSED to do that.

[Verse 1]
She came in with a lab coat and a beaker full of punch
that was smoking in a way that made you question having lunch,
goggles on her forehead and her hair a total wreck,
and a clipboard full of nothing that she guarded like a check.
"I'm running an experiment," she said, and would not say
what the hypothesis was or who'd consented to the assay.

[Chorus]
Unstable compound! Unstable compound!
Something's gonna happen and it's gonna make a sound!
The chemistry's undeniable, the method is a mess,
there's no control group, there's no data, there's no ethics board, no less!
Unstable compound! Don't stand too close!
It's the reaction, not the recipe, that everybody wants the most!

[Verse 2]
Now chemistry's a word that does a lot of heavy work:
it's the science with the beakers and the bunsen burner's quirk,
and it's the thing between two people that you cannot fake or force,
and it's the third thing, which is obvious, and follows both of course.
Three meanings in a beaker! Three meanings in a glass!
And every single one of them is volatile en masse!

[Chorus]

[Verse 3]
Now a hypothesis is just a guess that wore a lab coat,
and a variable's a thing you swore you'd hold and then you don't,
and a control group is the evening where you stayed at home instead —
nobody runs the control group. Nobody ever has.
So the data's contaminated and the sample size is one,
and she'd tell you that's a failure. And she'd tell you it was fun.

[Bridge]
Here's what they don't tell you in the chemistry department:
a reaction needs two reagents and a fair amount of argument.
You can't just want a reaction. You need something to react WITH.
And it's usually unstable. And it's usually a myth
that you'll ever get it balanced or you'll ever get it right —
so she poured the whole thing out and made another one that night.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(a bigger explosion, a beat of silence, a small "...huh.")
Note the result.
Discard the result.
Run it again.