Lyrics to
Paint It Black

This version of Paint It Black was released by Gil Scott-Heron in 1970.

Our About Gil Scott-Heron page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Paint It Black from 1970 as well as all of the other lyrics from Gil Scott-Heron that we have in our lyrics database.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to Gil Scott-Heron or about the 1970s in general.

Picture a man of nearly thirty
Who seems twice as old with clothes torn and dirty
Give him a job shining shoes
Or cleaning out toilets with bus station crews
Give him six children with nothing to eat
Expose them to life on a ghetto street
Tie an old rag around his wife’s head
And have her pregnant and lying in bed
Stuff them all in a Harlem house
And then tell them how bad things are down South.

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Gil Scott-Heron has released many songs over the years besides Paint It Black. Gil Scott-Heron released songs from 1970 to 2005 spanning across albums like Small Talk At 125th And Lenox, Pieces Of A Man, Free Will, Winter In America, The First Minute Of A New Day, It's Your World, From South Africa To South Carolina, Bridges, Secrets, The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron, 1980, Real Eyes, Reflections, Moving Target, Spirits, and Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Messages (Anthology). Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Gil Scott-Heron.

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

About Lyrics and Paint It Black by Gil Scott-Heron

The lyrics for Paint It Black are made up of the words, verses and background chorus for the popular 1970 song by Gil Scott-Heron. Like a lot of songs, the lyrics to Paint It Black have both direct meanings and metaphorical context hidden within the song's words. All of the meanings are only truly known by the creators of the lyrics for Paint It Black - Gil Scott-Heron and any of the writers who worked with them on the song.

If you have an interest in the structure of words and phrases, you can dissect the lyrics to Paint It Black by Gil Scott-Heron in multiple 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 Paint It Black" means the words set to the music of Paint It Black, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Gil Scott-Heron. 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 Paint It Black and the lyrics to Paint It Black are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Gil Scott-Heron who came here looking just for the lyrics to Paint It Black, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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