Small Empires · Album · Track 1
9 Aug 2026 · 4:43 · Synth-pop · 179 plays
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Lyrics
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One man at a barrier
decides which car goes through.
He didn't write the policy,
he just holds the only pen.
And he is not a monster —
he coaches, he has daughters —
but for eleven hours daily
he is the border of the world.
Nobody wakes up wanting the planet.
Everybody wants one gate —
Small empires! (small empires!)
Everybody wants a little country.
Something they can shut.
You don't need to want the world
to hold a life inside your hand —
small empires! (small empires!)
One gate! One list! One rule!
Every century's worst chapter
reads the same when you go close:
no cackling, no grand design,
just clerks who wouldn't bend a rule.
A hundred rooms, a hundred keys,
a hundred reasonable men,
and not one of them believed
they were the story's villain.
Nobody signs up for the horror.
Everybody guards their gate —
Everybody's got a border.
Guarded like a war.
The ones who ran the actual world
were only ever this, times ten —
And the question isn't who's the monster.
The question's how you hold it:
what do you do with the only key
on the day it costs somebody?
That's the whole of your character.
That's all of it. (small empires)
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Small EmpiresSynth-popSynth-pop1794:43