Lyrics to
Five Years

This version of Five Years was released by David Bowie in 1972.

Our About David Bowie page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Five Years from 1972 as well as all of the other lyrics from David Bowie that we have in our lyrics database.

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

Pushing thru the market
square
so many mothers sighing
News had just come over,
we had five years left to cry in

News guy wept and told us
earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
then I knew he was not lying

I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T.V.’s
My brain hurt like a warehouse
it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things
to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people

A girl my age went off her head
hit some tiny children
If the black hadn’t a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them

A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheel of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest
and a queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour
drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
don’t think you knew you were in this song

And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you’re beautiful, I want you to walk

We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
We’ve got five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
We’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got

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David Bowie has released many songs over the years besides Five Years. David Bowie released songs from 1967 to 2003 spanning across albums like David Bowie, Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station To Station, Heroes, Low, Lodger, Scary Monsters, Hot Space, Let's Dance, Tonight, Never Let Me Down, Black Tie White Noise, Outside, Earthling, Hours..., Heathen, and Reality. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by David Bowie.

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About Lyrics and Five Years by David Bowie

The lyrics for Five Years are made up of the words, verses and background chorus for the popular 1972 song by David Bowie. Like a lot of songs, the lyrics to Five Years 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 Five Years - David Bowie 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 Five Years by David Bowie 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 Five Years" means the words set to the music of Five Years, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by David Bowie. 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 Five Years and the lyrics to Five Years are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of David Bowie who came here looking just for the lyrics to Five Years, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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