Lyrics to
Muswell Hillbilly

This version of Muswell Hillbilly was released by The Kinks in 1971.

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

Well I said goodbye to Rosie Rooke this morning,
I’m gonna miss her bloodshot alcoholic eyes,
She wore her Sunday hat so she’d impress me,
I’m gonna carry her memory ’til the day I die.

They’ll move me up to Muswell Hill tomorrow,
Photographs and souvenirs are all I’ve got,
They’re gonna try and make me change my way of living,
But they’ll never make me something that I’m not.

Cos I’m a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in old West Virginia,
Never seen New Orleans, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Still I dream of the Black Hills that I ain’t never seen.

They’re putting us in little boxes,
No character just uniformity,
They’re trying to build a computerised community,
But they’ll never make a zombie out of me.

They’ll try and make me study elocution,
Because they say my accent isn’t right,
They can clear the slums as part of their solution,
But they’re never gonna kill my cockney pride.

Cos I’m a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in Old West Virginia,
Though my hills, they’re not green,
I’ve seen them in my dreams,
Take me back to those Black Hills,
That I ain’t never seen.

Well I’m a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in Old West Virginia,
Though my hills, they’re not green,
I’ve seen them in my dreams,
Take me back to those Black Hills,
That I ain’t never seen.

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The Kinks has released many songs over the years besides Muswell Hillbilly. The Kinks released songs from 1964 to 1993 spanning across albums like Kinks, Kinda Kinks, The Kink Kontroversy, Face To Face, Something Else, The Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur (Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire), Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, Muswell Hillbillies, Percy, Everybody's In Show-Biz, Preservation Act I, Preservation Act II, Soap Opera, Schoolboys In Disgrace, Sleepwalker, Misfits, Low Budget, Give The People What They Want, State Of Confusion, Word Of Mouth, Think Visual, UK Jive, and Phobia. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by The Kinks.

If you're a fan of the music of the 1970s looking for more songs from 1971 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Muswell Hillbilly by The Kinks

The lyrics for Muswell Hillbilly are defined as the words making up the song released by The Kinks in 1971. It also includes the verses and words used by the background chorus in the song. Like many hit songs, the lyrics to Muswell Hillbilly have different meanings to different people. While it is clear in some of the lyrics what the artist is trying to really say, only The Kinks and those working with them know all of the meanings behind all of the lyrics to their songs.

Some folks are interested in word and phrase etymology. It is easy to understand the lyrics to Muswell Hillbilly by The Kinks if you think through it. 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 Muswell Hillbilly" means the words set to the music of Muswell Hillbilly, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by The Kinks. 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 Muswell Hillbilly and the lyrics to Muswell Hillbilly are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of The Kinks who came here looking just for the lyrics to Muswell Hillbilly, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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