Lyrics to
Clean Money

This version of Clean Money was released by Elvis Costello in 1979.

Our Decade Lyrics Elvis Costello profile has all of the Clean Money lyrics from 1979 and many more songs from the Elvis Costello discography that we have on file.

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

Payday’s coming and we wash it away
Clean money, clean money
Payday’s coming and we wash it away
Clean money, clean money
That’s what I want to do
I want to spend it on you
Checking on a checkmate
Grassing on a classmate
So beautiful and fortunate
He hates to love, you love to hate
He can fix you for good
‘Cause he is the neighborhood
You can’t get money for blood
Blood money for doin’ no good
But they won’t take my love for tender

Payday’s coming and we wash it away
Clean money, clean money
Payday’s coming and we wash it away
Clean money, clean money
That’s what I want to do
I want to spend it on you

Have you made your selection ?
Are you ready for correction ?
‘Cause the wages of sin
Are an expensive infection
And it’s under the counter
Under the Geiger counter
Who stole your thunder ?
But they won’t take my love for tender

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Want more lyrics and songs by Elvis Costello?

Elvis Costello has released many songs over the years besides Clean Money. 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 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 Clean Money by Elvis Costello

The lyrics to Clean Money are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that Elvis Costello used when the song was created in 1979. The lyrics to Clean Money have both easy-to-spot meanings and hidden metaphors that have been discussed by the music press and fans, but only Elvis Costello 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 Clean Money by Elvis Costello. 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 Clean Money" means the words set to the music of Clean Money, 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 Clean Money and the lyrics to Clean Money 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 Clean Money, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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