EDDIE SCHWARTZ shakes his fist at the sky with new single «Come to This»

“Sometimes you have to shake your fist at the sky, take a deep breath and re-commit to the cause. ‘Come to This’ is about that,” says songwriter emeritus EDDIE SCHWARTZ about his prescient and timely new single. Taken from his latest EP FILM SCHOOL (released viaMelody Hill Records on November 12, 2025), “Come to This” is a rumination of the depth in which the arc of justice has bent beyond breaking point.

“I am the product of a much more hopeful time, a generation who really believed in progress, and that the arc of history was bending toward justice, and we had a meaningful part to play to help it along,” the veteran songwriter explains, searching for justification for the deep pendulum swing that doesn’t seem to be leveling out. “It’s taking a lot longer than I thought it would when my friends and I were in our late teens and early ‘20s. The song is a reaction to a particular moment in time when I mistakenly thought we had reached bottom. I think the anger ordinary Americans are now feeling is becoming overwhelming. ‘Come to This’ is 100% simpatico with that revulsion.”

A knowing examination of the current political and socio-economic climate throughout, “Come to This” captures that nostalgic look back at when times were seemingly simpler and society was not as divided. “We were creatures of the moment / Schoolboys dreaming all believing / On our path we could not falter / How could we know then / It would come to this,” Schwartz sings on the closing track of his EP. “Look, I’m crazy enough to think songs can make a difference, can bind us together and help steel our will to carry on,” he insists. “Can ‘Come to This’ play a small part in that? It’s worth a try.”

A celebrated songwriter whose credits have shifted generations (he wrote “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” for Pat Benator, “The Doctor” for The Doobie Brothers and “Don’t Shed a Tear” for Paul Carrack), his track record already suggests differently.

“I am the product of a much more hopeful time, a generation who really believed in progress and we had a meaningful part to help it along,” he explains dejectedly. “That innate optimism has crashed into ugly reality many times, but also been renewed, only to be beaten down again.”

But giving up is not an option. “Defiance is something I come back to time and time again, to some extent without realizing it until after a song is finished,” he says. “It’s really about empowerment and agency. You’re going to lose the struggle every time without it. And now collectively, we need that spirit of resistance more than ever.”

Sequenced in a way that suggests disillusionment with society at large, the EP is a masterclass in songwriting (his worldwide physical sales before the digital era are well in excess of 65 million units). Kicking off with first single “We Win” (“This song acknowledges the pain and the struggle to process the world at this moment in time, and muster some resolve, but professes love means you don’t have to succumb to it”), Film School concludes with “Come to This,” which strips away the optimism of the initial track and replaces it with a consciously positive affront. “I guess I felt the two songs are bookends in a way,” he muses. «’We Win’ is a song of hope and love and ‘Come to This’ faces the same reality from a very different place – anger, disillusionment, defiance.”

But Film School isn’t six songs of open protest. Like all great songwriters, Eddie values the importance of narrative and continuity. From the moody and introspective “Outbound Train,” to the ballad “Special Girl” (“A song I recorded years ago and has also been recorded by Meatloaf and America. I stripped it down and brought in an old friend, Lou Pomanti, who is a great player to do the idea justice, and the new version developed from there”), to the spirited waltz of “You Don’t Belong ” (“A song about my personal need to disassociate from a certain mentality that is common these days”), Film School plays out like a series of vignettes that starts out with optimism and grows and matures before reaching its final destination. While it may seem cynical, his message is more about survival through positive thinking. “Film School is realistically optimistic – optimistically realistic, something like that,” he says. “No bullshit, no false sense of security, but no despondency, no abdicating the field, no giving up and no surrender.”

It’s not a pessimistic view, but instead, one of reckoning. “Maybe we have reached bottom,” he concludes, reflecting on the recent tragedies in Minneapolis as a turning point. “Maybe those who think they can murder innocent people with impunity are starting to look over their shoulder. We the people are coming for them.”

“Come to This“ is the closing track on Eddie Schwartz’s recent EP Film School. It was released via Melody Hill Records and is available digitally and on CD