Horace and Pete

This is the theme song to the web series Horace and Pete, created by stellar comic Louis CK.

Each verse is three lines, the last two of which rhyme. The whole thing is less than three minutes long.

The show is set at a bar, and as in the theme to Cheers, the speaker seems to be a patron thereof.

"Hell no, I can't complain about my problems," he says. "I'm OK the way things are/ I'll pull my stool up to the bar/ At Horace and Pete's." Which sounds like he wants to complain, but feels the need to ask permission. He is hoping to hear: "No, go ahead, man, get it off your chest."

Either he has been given the go-ahead but is still reluctant to simply start in, or he has not... so he speaks in generalities. In either case, he offers: "Sometimes, I wonder, 'Why do we tear ourselves to pieces?'"

And... no response is forthcoming. Twice rebuffed, he decides the sour-grape approach, that he really didn't want to interact anyway. "I just need some time to think," he says. Ha! He wasn't rejected... he rejected them! He didn't want to talk anyway.

But he still wants to be around people, even as he sulks, so he adds, "Or maybe I just need a drink/ At Horace and Pete's." As Billy Joel put it in his song Piano Man, also set at a bar, "They're sharing a drink they call 'loneliness'/ But it's better than drinking alone."

In a small space, Simon creates a character who is in misery and wants company. Even though no one will interact with him, he'd rather be alone among people than truly alone.

And a bar is a good place for that.

Next Song: Cool Papa Bell