Lyrics to
African Night Flight

This version of African Night Flight was released by David Bowie in 1979.

Our About David Bowie page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for African Night Flight from 1979 as well as all of the other lyrics from David Bowie that we have in our lyrics database.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to David Bowie or about the 1970s in general.

African nightmare one-time Mormon
More men fall in Hullabaloo men
I slide to the nearest bar
Undermine chairman
I went too far
Bent on a windfall
rent a sony

Wonder
how the dollar went down
Gotta get a word to Elizabeth’s father
Hey no, he wished me well

Seemed like another day
I could fly
into the eye of god on high

His burning eye will see me through
One of these days, one of these days
Gotta get a word through one of these days

Asanti habari habari habari
Asanti nabana nabana nabana

Getting in mood for a Mombassa night flight
Pushing my luck, gonna fly like a mad thing
Bare strip takeoff
skimming over Rhino

Born in slumber less than peace
Struggle with a child
whose screaming dreaming
Drowned by the props all steely sunshine

Sick of you, sick of me
Lust for the free life
Quashed and maimed
Like a valuable loved one
Left unnamed

Seemed like another day
I could fly
into the eye of god on high

Over the bushland over the trees
Wise like Orangutan that was me

His burning eye will see me through
One of these days, one of these days
Gotta get a word through one of these days

Asanti habari habari habari
Asanti nabana nabana nabana

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David Bowie has released many songs over the years besides African Night Flight. David Bowie released songs from 1967 to 2003 spanning across albums like David Bowie, Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station To Station, Heroes, Low, Lodger, Scary Monsters, Hot Space, Let's Dance, Tonight, Never Let Me Down, Black Tie White Noise, Outside, Earthling, Hours..., Heathen, and Reality. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by David Bowie.

If you're a fan of the music of the 1970s looking for more songs from 1979 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and African Night Flight by David Bowie

The lyrics to African Night Flight are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that David Bowie used when the song was created in 1979. The lyrics to African Night Flight have both easy-to-spot meanings and hidden metaphors that have been discussed by the music press and fans, but only David Bowie and any collaborators know all of the inspirations for the song.

If you like etymology or breaking apart phrases and words, it is easy to understand the lyrics to African Night Flight by David Bowie. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to African Night Flight" means the words set to the music of African Night Flight, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by David Bowie. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to African Night Flight and the lyrics to African Night Flight are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of David Bowie who came here looking just for the lyrics to African Night Flight, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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