---
title: "It Can Get Worse"

meaning: "Masks and Monsters opener: Scoobert-doobert/youbert summon, dream that feel like nightmare: second summer inside, government keep me alive, pretty day through glass, say no."

year: 2020
release: "Masks and Monsters"
releaseType: "album"

artist: "Scoobert Doobert"
artistId: "#scoobert"

credits: "Written, performed, mixed, and mastered by Luke Francis Walton. Album art by Gentle Giant Illustrations."

spotify: "https://open.spotify.com/album/13zzM1QEnrvJ7kRwUGNIFw"
officialVideo: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToXWtBcOkk0"
apple: "https://music.apple.com/us/album/it-can-get-worse/1526427944?i=1526427962"

themes: ["pandemic", "lockdown", "Masks and Monsters", "cartoon", "nightmare", "isolation"]

isrc: QZK6P2060446
isrcSource: soundexchange
lyrics: |
  Scoobert doobert doobert
  Where are youbert
  We've got some work to doobert
  (I didn't know there was a youbert)

  It feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a nightmare
  Yeah
  It feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a nightmare

  Oh, what a pretty day
  Can you let me out?
  I wanna get away
  Get together now

  Second summer spent inside
  Government, keep me alive
  Like
  Oh, wanna get away
  Can you let me out?

  Say, no
  No no no no no no no
  No no no no no no no
  No

  It feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a nightmare
  Yeah
  It feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a dream
  Yeah, it feel like a nightmare

  Oh, what a pretty day
  Can you let me out?
  I wanna get away
  Get together now

  Second summer spent inside
  Government, keep me alive
  Like
  Oh, wanna get away
  Can you let me out?

  Say, no
  No no no no no no no
  No no no no no no no
  No

draft: false

---

Track one on [*Masks and Monsters*](/albums/masks-and-monsters/): Luke solo, North Park lockdown, August 2020. The LP opens on its title thesis, a weather report rather than reassurance, before the cartoon bits arrive. The avatar even gets summoned to do pandemic labor and then waved off in a parenthetical (*I didn't know there was a youbert*), the bit improvised mid-crisis.

From there it runs on dissociation, sunny cognition over a nightmare body, with the grammar slipping the same way the mind does: *it feel like a dream, yeah, it feel like a nightmare*. The rest is window versus wall, a pretty day outside and contact forbidden, fixed to its exact moment by one line: *second summer spent inside, government, keep me alive*. The state as lifeline while you're still trapped. It ends on a refusal chant, exit denied.

Sets up the emotional spine the [album essay](/albums/masks-and-monsters/) names, before [*Snuggle With Shaggy*](/songs/snuggle-with-shaggy/) turns the mask back on.

---