Lyrics to
Balm In Gilead

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

There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin-sick soul

If you can pray like Peter
If you can preach like Paul
Go home and tell your loved ones
He died to save us all

Nina Simone has released many songs over the years besides Balm In Gilead. Nina Simone released songs from 1958 to 1987 spanning across albums like Little Girl Blue, At Town Hall, The Amazing Nina Simone, At Newport, Forbidden Fruit, At The Village Gate, Nina Simone Sings Ellington, At Carnegie Hall, Broadway Blues Ballads, Folksy Nina, Nina Simone In Concert, Pastel Blues, I Put A Spell On You, Nina Simone With Strings, Wild Is The Wind, Let It All Out, Nina Simone Sings The Blues, High Priestess Of Soul, Silk And Soul, Nuff Said!, Nina Simone And Piano!, To Love Somebody, Black Gold, Here Comes The Sun, Emergency Ward, It Is Finished, Baltimore, Fodder On My Wings, Nina's Back, Let It Be Me, and Live At Ronnie Scott's. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Nina Simone.

When you decide to study the lyrics to Balm In Gilead, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1978 song by Nina Simone. Some of the lyrics to Balm In Gilead have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Nina Simone and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Balm In Gilead if you take apart the structure of the words. 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 Balm In Gilead" means the words set to the music of Balm In Gilead, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Nina Simone. 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 Balm In Gilead and the lyrics to Balm In Gilead are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Nina Simone who came here looking just for the lyrics to Balm In Gilead, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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