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Famous Last Words

from Spintunes by Dr. Lindyke

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In SpinTunes 6, Round 1, only one of the SpinTunes challenges jumped out at us. "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch.

If you're completely unfamiliar with it, the gist is this: Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie-Mellon university... a researcher in the field of virtual reality. He was asked to give a talk in a series that was once entitled "The Last Lecture", the premise of which is, if you had one last thing to say, what would it be? As chance would have it, Randy Pausch had pancreatic cancer, and this was to be his last lecture. And it was one of the most inspirational, uplifting talks ever presented.

The tricky part of meeting any challenge, though, is finding that "hook" for your song. For this song it turned out to be the fact that Randy Pausch not only was a virtual reality researcher, and not only that he taught a course called "Building Virtual Worlds"; but that he actually worked as a Disney Imagineer on the Aladdin ride. Disney's Aladdin is famous for the song "A Whole New World". So there's our musical inspiration, and we include a deliberate homage in both the (unsung) lyrics and the orchestral response.

There are a number of things present in the song that you'll only pick up on if you've seen The Last Lecture. The meme here isn't that some dying guy made a speech, but the message contained within that speech. So this IS NOT "The Ballad of Randy Pausch".

lyrics

If you had the chance to pass on
A message to the world
What would you want to say?
If you saw a light and you knew
The end was drawing near
Tell me what would you say?

Famous Last Words...
Famous Last Words...

We can't change the cards that we're dealt
But we can decide how to play them
We're stuck with the feelings we've felt
But we can decide how to say them

You've the power to create a brand new world
(A Whole New World)
Why not make it something grand?
(A new fantastic point of view)
The good that you do will bring good right back to you
(That's Karma!)
So why not lend a helping hand?

Famous Last Words...

If I had just three words to shout
I think I'd just shout, "Tell the truth"
The brick walls aren't there to keep us out
They're there so that we can show proof
That we want it
And I want it!
Don't you want it?

You've the power to create a brand new world
(A Whole New World)
Why not make it something grand?
(A new fantastic point of view)
The good that you do will bring good right back to you
(That's Karma!)
So why not lend a helping hand?

If you had the chance to forgive
Letting by-gones pass you by
Why not do it today?
The only thing we have is Time
And not so much as you'd think
As you'll find out someday

Famous Last Words...
Famous Last Words...
Famous Last Words...
Famous Last Words...

credits

from Spintunes, released January 26, 2013

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Dr. Lindyke Union

"Dr. Lindyke" is the nom de plume of William Hoover and Dave Leigh. William writes lyrics; Dave writes music. Though we write a lot, neither of us are really performers, and we LOVE it when people cover our songs. Please do.

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