White Jetta

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

It’s the first track I ever heard by Owen Ashworth and it was way back in 2009. What got me first was the fact he put a boombox in the back seat because his tape deck was busted. I thought maybe I was the only one who ever had to do that. White Jetta sounds so much better than Light Blue Ford Granada too — a candidate for worst car ever built. And we didn’t even have a tape deck, it was a broken radio. I went through so many sets of eight D batteries powering that boombox when I was 16, 17, 18 and 19. If I was driving anywhere, it was on and blasting.

I love the drums and bass in this — the cymbal crashes. The little tinkering keyboards. But mostly it’s the story and how he recounts adolescent pain, loneliness and a mother who’s ill.

Been this way for almost all my life
Wasn't born here Mom & me moved here when I was 5
These Kansas City boys are dull as butter knives

Had this little car since I was 17
The tape is busted, got a boom box in the back seat
Blasting Misfits all up & down these streets

To stay the same to never change
To stay the same to never change

The college kids in KC all leave in the fall
Don't have time for letters or long distance calls
If friend you leave then friend you're dead to me

Mom's been sick now for a long time
She says she hopes I'll want a family after she's died
She says the less you feel like a child
The more you'll want a child

To stay the same to never change
To stay the same to never change
To stay the same to never change
To stay the same to never change