Too long for terrestrial radio. They like short Songs, leaving more time for commercial ads that pay the bills. The Songs are just there to keep people listening between ads.

This Town

There’s not much fun in This Town (This first time you say the title, THE Hook, don't let your voice drop off. Make sure they hear it and get it the first time they hear it.)
Unless you’re drunk or high
But you’re bound by blood to This Town (I always question the need for 'But', 'And' and 'Because/'Cause'. Writers use them to connect ideas, but they can clutter up a Line in the singer's mouth, and the Line can read the same without them.)
Until the day you die

And even then the sidewalks call to you ('And'?)
And your bones stir where they’re laying when they do ('And'? Do the Lines read/sing better without 'And'?)

There’s not much talk in This Town (Verse II Line1 Repeats V1 Line 1, save for one word.)
About books and love and art (The further elucidation of what the Singer-Character emphasizes makes the Song strongly about 'This Town', likely locking in 'This Town' as the main idea. Verse III goes afield to tell of the 'pretty girl', a new and possibly more interesting focus for the main idea. Relationships are more interesting than feelings about life in general in a town.)
So you lose your hope in this town
And then you lose your heart ('And' here enables the Melody to match Line 4 of Verse I, with six syllables/notes to sing.)

And the world rolls by like there’s nothing here to see ('And' here could be omitted, maybe making the Line better.)
The world rolls by and it just lets us be
And time … just passes by (Omitting 'And' in Line 1 of this three-Line Stanza makes this 'And' less obtrusive.)

There’s a pretty girl in This Town
I keep my eye upon
We were married once in This Town
And we had ourselves a son (And)

And he’d dream at night of the lovely things you’d do (And)(The 'he'd' would make me think it referred to the 'son' Character introduced in the preceding Line.)
And stir where he lay sleeping next to you (And)

We fell apart in This Town (More about the relationship, less about the town. Deleting Verse I or II, and getting quickly to this relationship might be a stronger Song.)
Lost the fire down below
Where love goes in This Town
No one seems to know (Here the Singer-Character lapses into philosophical observation, away from the relationship.)

It just disappears and leaves you feeling low
Like someone turned the light off in your soul
And time … just passes by (Repeat from Stanza above.)

The years roll by in This Town (Now the Singer-Character is back to philosophizing about the town.)
And nothing seems to change (And)
If you live for long in This Town
That don’t seem so strange

And if you wonder if I ever come unglued (And)
I tell you now for certain that I do

We’ve served our time in This Town (Now I hear the 'we' as the Singer-Character speaking for the people of town, possibly for the son and ex-wife and himself, but then the next Line seems to leave out the ex who obviously had a complaint, and gave him one.)
We’ve no cause for complaint
We’ve had tough luck in this town
And good luck just the same

Now we stumble down dark streets once paved in gold (Again, the 'collective' reference to 'we' seems to reference the feelings and experience of the general population, possibly the son and ex-wife. It's vague.)
And we wonder how and when we grew so old (And)
Well, time … just passed us by (Again, a Repeat, emphasizing that idea of 'time', and in the strategic Last Line position, leaving it ringing in listener's ears as the Stanza ends.)

There’s not much fun in this town
Unless you’re drunk or high
The world rolls right past this town
The world rolls right on by
Right on by …

©2019 David Pulizzi
All rights reserved

There will always be another song to be written. Someone will write it. Why not you? www.garyeandrews.com