Lyrics to
Pieces Of A Man

This version of Pieces Of A Man was released by Gil Scott-Heron in 1971.

Our Decade Lyrics Gil Scott-Heron profile has all of the Pieces Of A Man lyrics from 1971 and many more songs from the Gil Scott-Heron discography that we have on file.

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

Jagged jigsaw pieces
Tossed about the room
I saw my grandma sweeping
With her old straw broom
She didn’t know what she was doing
She could hardly understand
That she was really sweeping up..
Pieces of a man

I saw my daddy greet the mailman
And I heard the mailman say
“Now don’t you take this letter to heart now Jimmy
Cause they’ve laid off nine others today”
He didn’t know what he was saying
He could hardly understand
That he was only talking to
Pieces of a man

I saw the thunder and heard the lightning!
And felt the burden of his shame
And for some unknown reason
He never turned my way

Pieces of that letter
Were tossed about that room
And now I hear the sound of sirens
Come knifing through the gloom
They don’t know what they are doing
They could hardly understand
That they’re only arresting
Pieces of a man

I saw him go to pieces
I saw him go to pieces
He was always such a good man
He was always such a strong man
Yeah, I saw him go to pieces
I saw him go to pieces

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Want more lyrics and songs by Gil Scott-Heron?

Gil Scott-Heron has released many songs over the years besides Pieces Of A Man. 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 popular 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1971 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Pieces Of A Man by Gil Scott-Heron

When you decide to study the lyrics to Pieces Of A Man, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1971 song by Gil Scott-Heron. Some of the lyrics to Pieces Of A Man have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Gil Scott-Heron and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Pieces Of A Man 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 Pieces Of A Man" means the words set to the music of Pieces Of A Man, 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 Pieces Of A Man and the lyrics to Pieces Of A Man 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 Pieces Of A Man, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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