Lyrics to
Less Than Zero

Released by Elvis Costello in 1977
From the Album: My Aim Is True |

This version of Less Than Zero was released by Elvis Costello in 1977.

Visit the Elvis Costello Lyrics profile at Decade Lyrics - it has the Less Than Zero lyrics as well as the rest of the songs by Elvis Costello.

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

Calling Mister Oswald with the swastika tattoo,
there is a vacancy waiting in the English voodoo,
carving “v” for vandal on the guilty boy’s head.
When he’s had enough of that maybe you’ll take him to bed
to teach him he’s alive before he wishes he was dead.

Turn up the TV. No one listening will suspect,
even your mother won’t detect it,
no your father won’t know.
they think that I’ve got no respect
but everything means less than zero.
Hey, ooh hey, hey, ooh hey.

Oswald and his sister are doing it again.
They’ve got the finest home movies that you have ever seen.
They’ve got a thousand variations: every service with a smile.
They’re gonna take a little break, and they’ll be back after a while.
well I hear that South America is coming into style.

A pistol was still smoking, a man lay on the floor.
Mister Oswald said he had an understanding with the law.
He said he heard about a couple living in the USA.
He said they traded in their baby for a Chevrolet.
Let’s talk about the future now we’ve put the past away.


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Elvis Costello has released many songs over the years besides Less Than Zero. 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 popular 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1977 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Less Than Zero by Elvis Costello

The lyrics to Less Than Zero are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that Elvis Costello used when the song was created in 1977. The lyrics to Less Than Zero 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 Less Than Zero 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 Less Than Zero" means the words set to the music of Less Than Zero, 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 Less Than Zero and the lyrics to Less Than Zero 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 Less Than Zero, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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