Ranches & Towers: A Shifting Skyline

Lyrics

[Intro]
Drive down Abernathy in the late afternoon.
The sun hits the brick low.
A long, flat line.
Nineteen sixty-two.

[Verse 1]
Carports and fescue grass.
The sound of a lawnmower somewhere on a Saturday.
The smell of charcoal, a quiet promise of dinner.
Windows placed just so, for a cross-breeze
before the air conditioners came for everyone.
This was the whole picture, once.
One story high.
Horizon to horizon.

[Chorus]
But the skyline shifts. A slow argument in steel.
The brick holds its line, the glass answers back.
From a horizontal town to a vertical dream.
The ranches and the towers, caught in the same light,
on the same piece of ground.

[Verse 2]
Then came two thousand and five.
A signature on a paper, and the earth-movers followed.
A quiet hum on Glenlake Parkway became the UPS campus.
A silver star for Mercedes landed on Glenridge Concourse.
No one asked the ranch houses their opinion.
They just watched the cranes go up,
and up,
and up.

[Chorus]
And the skyline shifts. A slow argument in steel.
The brick holds its line, the glass answers back.
From a horizontal town to a vertical dream.
The ranches and the towers, caught in the same light,
on the same piece of ground.

[Bridge]
Eva had a vision for a downtown.
A place to gather where there hadn't been one.
So City Springs rose up in eighteen, a clean sheet of paper.
And Hammond's packed up their petit fours,
found a new spot on Johnson Ferry.
That's the price of a view.
Someone's always moving.

[Outro]
Drive down Abernathy.
Look left, a brick ranch.
Look right, a tower of mirrored sky.
They don't speak the same language.
But they share the same address.