Lyrics to
Sweet Bird

This version of Sweet Bird was released by Joni Mitchell in 1975.

Our About Joni Mitchell page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Sweet Bird from 1975 as well as all of the other lyrics from Joni Mitchell that we have in our lyrics database.

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

Out on some borderline
Some mark of inbetween
I lay down golden-in time
And woke up vanishing

Sweet bird you are
Briefer than a falling star
All these vain promises on beauty jars
Somewhere with your wings on time
You must be laughing
Behind our eyes
Calendars of our lives
Circled with compromise
Sweet bird of time and change
You must be laughing
Up on your feathers laughing

Golden in time
Cities under the sand
Power, ideals and beauty
Fading in everyone’s hand

Give me some time
I feel like I’m losing mine
Out here on this horizon line
With the earth spinning
And the sky forever rushing
No one knows
They can never get that close
Guesses at most
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching
Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching

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Want more lyrics and songs by Joni Mitchell?

Joni Mitchell has released many songs over the years besides Sweet Bird. Joni Mitchell released songs from 1968 to 2007 spanning across albums like Song To A Seagull, Clouds, Ladies Of The Canyon, Blue, For The Roses, Court And Spark, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Mingus, Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog, Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm, Night Ride Home, Turbulent Indigo, Taming The Tiger, Both Sides Now, and Shine. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Joni Mitchell.

If you're a fan of 1970s music looking for more songs from 1975 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Sweet Bird by Joni Mitchell

When you decide to study the lyrics to Sweet Bird, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1975 song by Joni Mitchell. Some of the lyrics to Sweet Bird have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Joni Mitchell and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

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

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