Lyrics to
Sing Another Song, Boys

This version of Sing Another Song, Boys was released by Leonard Cohen in 1971.

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(Let’s sing another song, boys, this one has grown old and bitter.)
Ah his fingernails, I see they’re broken,
his ships they’re all on fire.
The moneylender’s lovely little daughter
ah, she’s eaten, she’s eaten with desire.
She spies him through the glasses
from the pawnshops of her wicked father.
She hails him with a microphone
that some poor singer, just like me, had to leave her.
She tempts him with a clarinet,
she waves a Nazi dagger.
She finds him lying in a heap;
she wants to be his woman.
He says, “Yes, I might go to sleep
but kindly leave, leave the future,
leave it open.”

He stands where it is steep,
oh I guess he thinks that he’s the very first one,
his hand upon his leather belt now
like it was the wheel of some big ocean liner.
And she will learn to touch herself so well
as all the sails burn down like paper.
And he has lit the chain
of his famous cigarillo.
Ah, they’ll never, they’ll never ever reach the moon,
at least not the one that we’re after;
it’s floating broken on the open sea, look out there, my friends,
and it carries no survivors.
But lets leave these lovers wondering
why they cannot have each other,
and let’s sing another song, boys,
this one has grown old and bitter.

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Leonard Cohen has released many songs over the years besides Sing Another Song, Boys. Leonard Cohen released songs from 1967 to 2004 spanning across albums like Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Songs From A Room, Songs Of Love And Hate, New Skin For The Old Ceremony, Death Of A Ladies' Man, Recent Songs, Various Positions, I'm Your Man, The Future, Ten New Songs, and Dear Heather. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Leonard Cohen.

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About Lyrics and Sing Another Song, Boys by Leonard Cohen

When you decide to study the lyrics to Sing Another Song, Boys, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1971 song by Leonard Cohen. Some of the lyrics to Sing Another Song, Boys have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Leonard Cohen and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

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

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