REVENUE UNIT

Powerful, soulful, controlled fire. Alicia Keys meets H.E.R, Piano-driven with atmospheric production. Emotional restraint that breaks at exactly the right moment.

REVENUE UNIT

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LYRICS

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[Intro: Spoken, female, soft, reverb, sparse piano]

Two-seventy-five to eight hundred dollars a day

That’s not what it costs to raise a child

That’s what it costs to own one

And nobody wants to say that out loud

So I will

[Verse 1]

They came with briefcases and borrowed funds

Bought the beds and the buildings and the broken ones

Cut the staff to the floor let the ceilings cave

Loaded debt on the company like a shallow grave

Six months later took a hundred million out

Two more years three-seventy-five not a shred of doubt

Pulled it straight from underneath the children sleeping

While the body count was climbing and the records weren’t keeping

[Pre-Chorus]

Eighty-six gone in just one decade

Thirteen investigated that’s all they made

Forty-three percent above the line

But the dividend was clearing so they called it fine

[Chorus]

Revenue unit that’s what they call a child

Two-seventy-five to eight hundred for a while

Revenue unit a bed a chart a name

And when the lawsuits land they just rebrand the game

They don’t learn who you are

They don’t ask who you love

Just check the per diem rate

And that’s enough

Revenue unit

That’s your baby

Revenue unit

Say it back

[Verse 2]

Cornelius was sixteen at a place in Michigan

Threw a sandwich in the cafeteria that was his only sin

They held him face down on the floor twelve minutes flat

Cardiac arrest he never came back from that

Medical examiner wrote it plain homicide

Five states banned the company wouldn’t let them hide

So the founder changed the name overnight to Vivant

Same building same beds same fluorescent dawn

[Pre-Chorus]

Sequel went to Vivant Mentor turned Sevita

AdvoServ went to Bellwether like the blood was getting sweeter

Eighty-six dead from just the one they caught

How many names they buried how many names they bought

[Chorus]

Revenue unit that’s what they call a child

Two-seventy-five to eight hundred for a while

Revenue unit a bed a chart a name

And when the lawsuits land they just rebrand the game

They don’t learn who you are

They don’t ask who you love

Just check the per diem rate

And that’s enough

Revenue unit

That’s your baby

Revenue unit

Say it back

[Bridge]

Paige was fourteen

Autistic

Couldn’t say a word

They strapped her to a bed in a state she’d never heard of

Sick for days throwing up crying out in silence

Nobody picked up the phone

Nobody broke the quiet

Died of dehydration

Hands still in the straps

And the company wrote behavioral on the paperwork after that

They kicked kids in the head and called it intervention

Broke their arms and their jaws and wrote it in the documentation

[Verse 3]

One-point-seven billion in damages last year

The Senate wrote a hundred thirty-six pages crystal clear

Called it Warehouses of Neglect that’s the actual name

Said the harm was built into the model not a glitch a feature not a shame

Eight ninety-five million from a single jury trial

Where a thirteen-year-old girl survived what no child should

She took the stand and testified

And they paid but the machine is still alive

[Outro: Spoken, female, quiet, piano dissolving]

There are two hundred thousand children

In residential treatment facilities

Right now

Tonight

And the companies that hold them

Don’t have to report it when one of them dies

Revenue unit

That’s what they call your baby

Somebody’s daughter

Somebody’s son

Two-seventy-five to eight hundred a day

And when they die

They change the name on the building

And start again