Lyrics to
Green Shirt

Released by Elvis Costello in 1978
From the Album: This Year's Model |

This version of Green Shirt was released by Elvis Costello in 1978.

Our Decade Lyrics Elvis Costello profile has all of the Green Shirt lyrics from 1978 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.

There’s a smart young woman on a light blue screen
Who comes into my house every night.
And she takes all the red, yellow, orange and green
And she turns them into black and white.
But you tease, and you flirt
And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt
You can please yourself but somebody’s gonna get it

Better cut off all identifying labels
Before they put you on the torture table

‘Cause somewhere in the “Quizling Clinic”
There’s a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes
She’s listening in to the Venus line
She’s picking out names
I hope none of them are mine

But you tease, and you flirt…

Never said I was a stool pigeon
I never said I was a diplomat
Everybody is under suspicion
But you don’t wanna hear about that

‘Cause you tease, and you flirt…

Better send a begging letter to the big investigation
Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?

You tease, and you flirt…

You can please yourself but somebody’s gonna get it
You can please yourself but somebody’s gonna get it


Want more lyrics and songs by Elvis Costello?

Elvis Costello has released many songs over the years besides Green Shirt. 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 1978 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Green Shirt by Elvis Costello

The lyrics to Green Shirt are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that Elvis Costello used when the song was created in 1978. The lyrics to Green Shirt 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.

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If you like etymology or breaking apart phrases and words, it is easy to understand the lyrics to Green Shirt 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 Green Shirt" means the words set to the music of Green Shirt, 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 Green Shirt and the lyrics to Green Shirt 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 Green Shirt, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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