Unsettled Scores is by far the worst Lloyd Webber ballad. Musically and lyrically, it is just all over the place. It sounds like three songs cut-and-pasted together (which it probably was) and thrown in at the last minute (which it probably wasn't). Most of the song is a laundry list of different kinds of people which ends in a wallow of self-pity attempting to make the audience sympathize with a murderer, again (Phantom, Sunset Boulevard).
"The betrayers, the betrayed
The abandoned, the afraid
The corrupted and the celebrated
Endlessly humiliated
Gloriously big parade"
WTF?
"An American flyer on a steep incline
The wind blowing through your hair
The trophies and the holidays, they vanished in the air
The betrayers the betrayed, the abandoned the afraid
The glorified the idolised, the bastards and their jealous eyes
An amazingly big parade"
HUH???
And the lyrics fall such that the syllable given the most emphasis in the last line of the last stanzas is "-ly".
"An amazing-LEEE big parade!"
But the real kicker is in the reprise when The Man sings:
"And all my prayers are loaded in THIS GUN!!!!!"
sheesh...
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian