Lyrics to
Big Tears

This version of Big Tears was released by Elvis Costello in 1978.

Our About Elvis Costello page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Big Tears from 1978 as well as all of the other lyrics from Elvis Costello that we have in our lyrics database.

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

Everyone is busy with the regular routine
The sniper just takes his aim
Everyone is window shopping, no one is amazed
Even if he hit you, you’d still think it’s just a graze
You go to a movie, you go to a show
You think that you’re living, you don’t really know
Big tears mean nothing
You can count them as they fall
Big tears mean nothing
When you’re lying in your coffin
Tell me who’s been taken in

Oh, you talk about the new boss automatic clause
But of course they make it all up for you
Always fascinated by the weird edge of town
Come home disappointed every time they put you down
Laughing with the old boys, saying that it’s all noise

I suppose big tears mean nothing
You can count them as they fall
Big tears mean nothing
When you’re lying in your coffin
Tell me who’s been taken in

All the buttons of my overcoat
They have fallen off one by one
You wouldn’t even like me if you’d never had a drink
You wouldn’t even like me if you never stopped to think
Standing in the shadow, turning wives to widows

Don’t you know big tears mean nothing
You can count them as they fall
Big tears mean nothing
When you’re lying in your coffin
Tell me who’s been taken in
Tell me, me or yous been taken in
Tell me, tell me, tell me

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Want more lyrics and songs by Elvis Costello?

Elvis Costello has released many songs over the years besides Big Tears. Elvis Costello released songs from 1977 to 2004 spanning across albums like My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy!!, Trust, Almost Blue, Imperial Bedroom, Punch The Clock, Goodbye Cruel World, Blood And Chocolate, King Of America, Spike, Mighty Like A Rose, The Juliet Letters, Brutal Youth, Kojak Variety, Deep Dead Blue, All This Useless Beauty, Painted From Memory, For The Stars, When I Was Cruel, North, and The Delivery Man. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Elvis Costello.

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

About Lyrics and Big Tears by Elvis Costello

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

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

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