Lyrics to
Helpless Dancer

This version of Helpless Dancer was released by The Who in 1973.

Our About The Who page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Helpless Dancer from 1973 as well as all of the other lyrics from The Who that we have in our lyrics database.

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

When a man is running from his boss
Who hold a gun that fires “cost”
And people die from being cold
Or left alone because they’re old
And bombs are dropped on fighting cats
And children’s dreams are run with rats
If you complain you disappear
Just like the lesbians and queers
No one can love without the grace
Of some unseen and distant face
And you get beaten up by blacks
Who though they worked still got the sack
And when your soul tells you to hide
Your very right to die denied
And in the battle on the streets
You fight computers and receipts
And when a man is trying to change
But only causes further pain
You realize that all along
Something in us going wrong…

You stop dancing.

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The Who has released many songs over the years besides Helpless Dancer. The Who released songs from 1965 to 1982 spanning across albums like The Who Sings My Generation, A Quick One / Happy Jack, The Who Sell Out, Tommy, Who's Next, Quadrophenia, The Who By Numbers, Who Are You, Face Dances, and It's Hard. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by The Who.

If you're a fan of the music of the 1970s looking for more songs from 1973 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Helpless Dancer by The Who

The lyrics to Helpless Dancer are the words, verses and chorus for the song released by The Who in 1973. Elements of the lyrics to Helpless Dancer are both direct in meaning and also metaphorical with the real meanings of the song only known by The Who and any collaborating writers working on the lyrics for Helpless Dancer back when it was created.

Some people have an interest in the etymology behind words and phrases. You can take apart the lyrics to Helpless Dancer by The Who in a number of 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 Helpless Dancer" means the words set to the music of Helpless Dancer, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by The Who. 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 Helpless Dancer and the lyrics to Helpless Dancer are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of The Who who came here looking just for the lyrics to Helpless Dancer, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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