In the current musician-funding malaise, one of our long-time favorite singer-songwriters Eef Barzelay (Clem Snide) has found it necessary to write songs for folks for $200 cash money, per song.  As Barzelay explained to Esquire: “To achieve sustained profitability in the music business is really almost impossible at this point, as far as I can tell,” Barzelay said. “So for me it is satisfying because I like to write songs and whenever I’m in a real pinch for money I offer it up to my people and they go for it.”  Barzelay has apparently written 157 of these personalized songs.

Esquire thus asked him to write a song on the topic of “what it means to be a man,” and 48-hours later Barzelay sent back the clever song below entitled The Ballad of a Man.  Listen (replete with tape-recorder clicks) as Barzelay skewers a dissatisfied, covetous paramour.  People, you can’t have it all.