Lyrics to
El Diablo

This version of El Diablo was released by Zz Top in 1977.

Visit the Zz Top Lyrics profile at Decade Lyrics - it has the El Diablo lyrics as well as the rest of the songs by Zz Top.

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

Did you ever hear the story
That happened not long ago
’bout the man with a tan:
El diablo de Mexico?
And this man played his hand
And he lived by the luck of the draw;
Now and then and again,
Found him steppin’ outside of the law
Hey, hey!

And his fortune he had made
let him live high on the hog
Til the day of the raid
When they hunted him like a dog.
He was out on the run,
Knowing he could get by,
‘Cause the men killed in sin
were not there to testify.
Hey, hey!

He was caught, he was bound
In La Casa de Calaboose.
He was tried; he was found
And readied for the noose.
But the break he would make,
It didn’t turn out so well.
And the hombre called “Diablo”
Bid his last farewell.

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Zz Top has released many songs over the years besides El Diablo. Zz Top released songs from 1971 to 2003 spanning across albums like ZZ Top's First Album, Rio Grande Mud, Tres Hombres, Fandango!, Tejas, Deguello, El Loco, Eliminator, Afterburner, Recycler, Antenna, Rhythmeen, XXX, and Mescalero. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Zz Top.

If you're a fan of popular 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1977 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and El Diablo by Zz Top

The lyrics for El Diablo are made up of the words, verses and background chorus for the popular 1977 song by Zz Top. Like a lot of songs, the lyrics to El Diablo 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 El Diablo - Zz Top 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 El Diablo by Zz Top 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 El Diablo" means the words set to the music of El Diablo, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Zz Top. 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 El Diablo and the lyrics to El Diablo are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Zz Top who came here looking just for the lyrics to El Diablo, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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