Lyrics to
No Dancing

This version of No Dancing was released by Elvis Costello in 1977.

Our About Elvis Costello page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for No Dancing from 1977 as well as all of the other lyrics from Elvis Costello that we have in our lyrics database.

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

Oh I know that she
Has made a fool of him
Like girls have done so many nights before
Time and time again
Life is so strange
I don’t know why
But somebody, somebody has to cry
There’s gonna be no dancing when they get home
There’s gonna be no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing when they get home

Now he’s telling her
Every little thing he’s done
Once he glanced at the jackets of some paperbacks
Now he’s read every one
He’s such a drag
He’s not insane
It’s just that everybody
Has to feel his pain
There’s gonna be no dancing when they get home

He’s getting down on his knees
He finds that the girl is not so easy to please
Oh oh, after all, his nights were just a paper striptease
She’s caught it like some disease

If he says no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing on my own

She can’t even speak to him
He can’t face her now
He says “Even though I wanna shake your hand
All I ever do is bow.
So now you see
How can it be.
Why can’t you give me anythin’ but sympathy?”

There’s gonna be no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing
There’s gonna be no dancing on my own

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Want more lyrics and songs by Elvis Costello?

Elvis Costello has released many songs over the years besides No Dancing. 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 No Dancing by Elvis Costello

When you decide to study the lyrics to No Dancing, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1977 song by Elvis Costello. Some of the lyrics to No Dancing have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Elvis Costello and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to No Dancing 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 No Dancing" means the words set to the music of No Dancing, 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 No Dancing and the lyrics to No Dancing 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 No Dancing, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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