Lyrics to
Nightingale

This version of Nightingale was released by Carole King in 1974.

Our About Carole King page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Nightingale from 1974 as well as all of the other lyrics from Carole King that we have in our lyrics database.

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

Like some night bird, homeward wingin’
He seeks the sheltered nest
Like the sailor’s lost horizon
He needs some place to rest
The songs that he’s been singin’
No longer make much sense
And those strangers’ cold perceptions
They’ve killed his confidence

Nightingale
She sails away upon a sea of song
Nightingale
She serenades his lonely, lonely life along
When his tired voice is broken
His golden hope is gone
She makes a lost soul’s simple longing
Somehow not so wrong
Nightingale
Nightingale

He was strong, but he was taken
By the thought of his success
Those spotlight shadows, how they lured him
And took him like all the rest
But that old dream don’t look good now
No, it don’t seem quite the same
He needs to hear a tender word
Won’t you sing him home again

Nightingale
She sails away upon a sea of song
Nightingale
She serenades his lonely, lonely life along
When his strength is slowly goin’
His pride is all but gone
She makes a foolish dreamer listen
To one last song
Nightingale
Nightingale

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Carole King has released many songs over the years besides Nightingale. Carole King released songs from 1968 to 2005 spanning across albums like Now That Everything's Been Said, Writer, Tapestry, Music, Rhymes & Reasons, Fantasy, Wrap Around Joy, Really Rosie, Thoroughbred, Simple Things, Welcome Home, Touch The Sky, Pearls: Songs Of Goffin And King, One To One, Speeding Time, City Streets, Colour Of Your Dreams, Love Makes The World, and The Living Room Tour. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Carole King.

If you're a fan of lyrics from 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1974 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Nightingale by Carole King

When you decide to study the lyrics to Nightingale, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1974 song by Carole King. Some of the lyrics to Nightingale have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Carole King and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Nightingale if you take apart the structure of the words. 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 Nightingale" means the words set to the music of Nightingale, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Carole King. 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 Nightingale and the lyrics to Nightingale are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Carole King who came here looking just for the lyrics to Nightingale, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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