Lyrics to
Born Reckless

This version of Born Reckless was released by John Cougar Mellencamp in 1978.

Our About John Cougar Mellencamp page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Born Reckless from 1978 as well as all of the other lyrics from John Cougar Mellencamp that we have in our lyrics database.

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Spend a lot of time tryin’ to grow up
Guess I got a lot of growin’ up to do
Used to tell me sit down, hey shut up
Guess they don’t know what I was goin’ through
But I’ve loved me some girls
And I’ve broken me some hearts
A cast in Nova in my own right
As I see here watching the sun coming up
I guess it’s okay, yea its ok
To say good night

Born reckless, born reckless
Born reckless (watch the family cry)
Cause I was born to be reckless
Till the day, I die

Well you know, I’ve been shoved around
Hey, but I’ve done my share of the shovin’ too
I guess you get what you deserve
Yeah you get what’s comin’ to you
For the life of me, I don’t understand
I don’t understand, how I ever got you
Someone so warm to hold my hand
When this world has beat me back through

Well what I really want to say is
I guess I don’t know, what it is I really wanna say
Anyway the thing is, I’m just surprised
That you’re still here with me today
‘Cause I’ve lied and I’ve cheated
And I’ve spit in your face
I’ve taken from you exactly what I need
But I want you to know
There’s no one to take your place
How can we embrace love, how can we make love
At such an high rate of speed

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John Cougar Mellencamp has released many songs over the years besides Born Reckless. John Cougar Mellencamp released songs from 1976 to 2007 spanning across albums like Chestnut Street Incident, A Biography, John Cougar, Nothin' Matters And What If It Did, American Fool, The Kid Inside, Uh-Huh, Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee, Big Daddy, Whenever We Wanted, Human Wheels, Dance Naked, Mr. Happy Go Lucky, John Mellencamp, Rough Harvest, Cuttin' Heads, Trouble No More, and Freedom's Road. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by John Cougar Mellencamp.

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

About Lyrics and Born Reckless by John Cougar Mellencamp

The lyrics for Born Reckless are made up of the words, verses and background chorus for the popular 1978 song by John Cougar Mellencamp. Like a lot of songs, the lyrics to Born Reckless 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 Born Reckless - John Cougar Mellencamp 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 Born Reckless by John Cougar Mellencamp 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 Born Reckless" means the words set to the music of Born Reckless, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by John Cougar Mellencamp. 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 Born Reckless and the lyrics to Born Reckless are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of John Cougar Mellencamp who came here looking just for the lyrics to Born Reckless, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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