Lyrics to
Taxi Dancer

This version of Taxi Dancer was released by John Cougar Mellencamp in 1978.

Our About John Cougar Mellencamp page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Taxi Dancer from 1978 as well as all of the other lyrics from John Cougar Mellencamp that we have in our lyrics database.

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Oh yeah
Well she started out, just to be a dancer
Gonna make her livin’ dancin’
In the Broadway shows
So she hitchhiked cross the country
From Pasaroba to the Big Red Apple
Where your dreams are made
Your debts must be paid on time

Well she wasn’t used to livin’ in the city
So she took a job cleanin’ up as a maid
At the Grammercy Park Hotel
And all her auditions
They didn’t turn out so pretty
So she took a job dancin’
At the bar down the street as well

I’ll hold you close, Taxi Dancer
And I’ll listen to how your outgrew your dreams
How they faded away
I’ll hold you close, Taxi Dancer
We can pretend this floor is the Broadway stage

Well I don’t know how long or how far
Her fortune did take her
But I heard she sits alone drunk
In a bar downtown on 42nd Street
And sometimes an old Butch
Will slip a quarter into the jukebox
And she’ll stagger to the bar
And dance with that girl for free

Oh the stage, baby

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John Cougar Mellencamp has released many songs over the years besides Taxi Dancer. John Cougar Mellencamp released songs from 1976 to 2007 spanning across albums like Chestnut Street Incident, A Biography, John Cougar, Nothin' Matters And What If It Did, American Fool, The Kid Inside, Uh-Huh, Scarecrow, The Lonesome Jubilee, Big Daddy, Whenever We Wanted, Human Wheels, Dance Naked, Mr. Happy Go Lucky, John Mellencamp, Rough Harvest, Cuttin' Heads, Trouble No More, and Freedom's Road. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by John Cougar Mellencamp.

If you're a fan of popular 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1978 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Taxi Dancer by John Cougar Mellencamp

The lyrics to Taxi Dancer are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that John Cougar Mellencamp used when the song was created in 1978. The lyrics to Taxi Dancer have both easy-to-spot meanings and hidden metaphors that have been discussed by the music press and fans, but only John Cougar Mellencamp and any collaborators know all of the inspirations for the song.

If you like etymology or breaking apart phrases and words, it is easy to understand the lyrics to Taxi Dancer by John Cougar Mellencamp. 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 Taxi Dancer" means the words set to the music of Taxi Dancer, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by John Cougar Mellencamp. 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 Taxi Dancer and the lyrics to Taxi Dancer are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of John Cougar Mellencamp who came here looking just for the lyrics to Taxi Dancer, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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