Lyrics to
The Boston Rag

This version of The Boston Rag was released by Steely Dan in 1973.

Our Steely Dan Songs profile has The Boston Rag lyrics from 1973 and most if not all of the lyrics by Steely Dan that we have here at Decade Lyrics.

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

Any news was good news
And the feeling was bad at home
I was out of mind and you
Were on the phone
Lonnie was the kingpin
Back in nineteen sixty-five
I was singing this song
When Lonnie came alive

Bring back the Boston Rag
Tell all your buddies
That it ain’t no drag
Bring back the Boston Rag

You were Lady Bayside
There was nothing that I could do
So I pointed my car down
Seventh Avenue
Lonnie swept the playroom
And he swallowed up all he found
It was forty-eight hours til
Lonnie came around

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Want more lyrics and songs by Steely Dan?

Steely Dan has released many songs over the years besides The Boston Rag. Steely Dan released songs from 1972 to 2000 spanning across albums like Can't Buy A Thrill, Countdown To Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, The Royal Scam, Aja, Gaucho, and Two Against Nature. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Steely Dan.

If you're a fan of 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1973 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and The Boston Rag by Steely Dan

When you decide to study the lyrics to The Boston Rag, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1973 song by Steely Dan. Some of the lyrics to The Boston Rag have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Steely Dan and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

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

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