About the Song

Track: Statistician’s Blues

Length: 2:57

Album: New Connection (2002)

Artist: Todd Snider

Songwriters: Todd Snider & Kent Finlay

Favorite part:

“The average bank robber lives within, say

About twenty miles of the bank that he robs

There’s this little bank not far from here

That I’ve been watching now for a while

Seems likely lately all’s I can think about’s

How bad I wanna go out in style”

Here’s Why I Love It

What’s not to love about Todd Snider? Seriously, though. He’s like a pair of your favorite blue jeans—tried, true, and just plain ole easy to wear. Nothing fancy, nothing too complicated, just something you slide on every chance you get. To me, that’s Snider. He’s a true musician’s musician—a well-respected journeyman troubadour. And perhaps one of the best storytellers with a guitar on his lap—sorry, Bruce, you can’t have it all. (Case in point: I featured the intro and version of this song from his live album Near Truths and Hotel Rooms—adore the entire album, btw—on the Lyrics I Love playlist.)

Anyway…about this song. Not only is he poking fun at “statistics,” which most times are inherently meaningless for most people, at least for a doer like Snider, but he does this in a very clever way. He blends what could be confusing wordplay (after all, statistics are confusing) with some straightforward, on-the-nose lines (after all, life is simpler than we make it.) He also uses misdirection (see the favorite part above) very well—a tactic all great storytellers have in their arsenal. A bedrock for great storytelling, really. I’m pretty sure that if you asked Snider, he’d say he was just having fun, or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this concoction of fun was a carefully crafted combustion of irony. Probably. Either way, to me, this is the beauty of Snider and artists like him. We don’t need to sit here and try to figure it out. Or, as Snider reminds with the chorus in this song, “Too much to think about / too much to figure out / stuck between hope and doubt / there’s too much to think about.” Just sit back and enjoy the fact that his brain comes up with this stuff. Start right now, here, with this song.

Read the Lyrics

Listen to the Song

*This article is part of the ongoing Lyrics I Love series: short interpretations of the meaning and story behind one song with lyrics that move me.