Lyrics to
Bad Brakes

This version of Bad Brakes was released by Cat Stevens in 1978.

Visit the Cat Stevens Lyrics profile at Decade Lyrics - it has the Bad Brakes lyrics as well as the rest of the songs by Cat Stevens.

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

Bad brakes whole car shakes
Looks like I’m heading for a breakdown
Black smoke engine beginning to choke
I must be heading for a breakdown

I pulled up for a mouth of coca-cola
Down at Samuel’s cafe
Saw a little spanish lady coming over
Said “lady are you going my way” she said “o-lay”

Bad brakes carburettor shakes
Looks like you’re heading for a breakdown
Black smoke engine beginning to choke
We must be heading for a breakdown

We hit the road at 90 miles an hour
Heading for ‘Frisco Bay
She said “Senor you got cop on your shoulder”
I said “oh now we’d better not stay
We got to get away with our
Bad brakes carburettor shakes
Looks like we’re heading for a breakdown”

He was catching up nose right inside our mirror
When the motor blowed
We climbed out and she began to shiver
Oh no sir please let us go
He said “don’t you know you got
Bad brakes carburettor shakes
Looks like you bought yourself a breakdown
Black smoke engine beginning to choke
And you’ve got yourself a breakdown”

Bad brakes engine beginning to shake
Looks like we’ve got ourselves a breakdown
Black smoke engine beginning to choke
We got ourselves a breakdown

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Want more lyrics and songs by Cat Stevens?

Cat Stevens has released many songs over the years besides Bad Brakes. Cat Stevens released songs from 1967 to 1978 spanning across albums like New Masters, Matthew & Son, Tea For The Tillerman, Mona Bone Jakon, Teaser And The Firecat, Catch Bull At Four, Foreigner, Buddha And The Chocolate Box, Numbers, Izitso, and Back To Earth. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Cat Stevens.

If you're a fan of lyrics from 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1978 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Bad Brakes by Cat Stevens

The lyrics for Bad Brakes are made up of the words, verses and background chorus for the popular 1978 song by Cat Stevens. Like a lot of songs, the lyrics to Bad Brakes have both direct meanings and metaphorical context hidden within the song's words. All of the meanings are only truly known by the creators of the lyrics for Bad Brakes - Cat Stevens and any of the writers who worked with them on the song.

If you have an interest in the structure of words and phrases, you can dissect the lyrics to Bad Brakes by Cat Stevens in multiple ways. 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 Bad Brakes" means the words set to the music of Bad Brakes, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Cat Stevens. 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 Bad Brakes and the lyrics to Bad Brakes are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Cat Stevens who came here looking just for the lyrics to Bad Brakes, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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