Lyrics to
The Late Show

This version of The Late Show was released by Jackson Browne in 1974.

Our About Jackson Browne page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for The Late Show from 1974 as well as all of the other lyrics from Jackson Browne that we have in our lyrics database.

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

Everyone I’ve ever known has wished me well
Anyway that’s how it seems, it’s hard to tell
Maybe people only ask you how you’re doing
‘Cause that’s easier than letting on how little they could care
But when you know that you’ve got a real friend somewhere
Suddenly all the others are so much easier to bear

Now to see things clear it’s hard enough I know
While you’re waiting for reality to show
Without dreaming of the perfect love
And holding it so far above
That if you stumbled onto someone real, you’d never know
(You’d never know)
You could be with somebody who is lonely too
(Sometimes it doesn’t show)
He might be trying to get across to you
(Words can be so slow)
When your own emptiness is all that’s getting through
There comes a point when you’re not sure why you’re still talking
I passed that point long ago
(Long ago)
Now I’m so tired of all this circling
And all these glimpses of the end
(You know it’s useless to pretend)
That’s all the voices say:
“You’ll go right on circling
Until you’ve found some kind of friend”

I saw you through the laughter and the noise
You were talking with the soldiers and the boys
While they scuffled for your weary smiles
I thought of all the empty miles
And the years that I’ve spent looking for your eyes
(Looking for your eyes)
And now I’m sitting here wondering what to say
(That you might recognize)
Afraid that all these words might scare you away
(And break through the disguise)
No one ever talks about their feelings anyway
Without dressing them in dreams and laughter
I guess it’s just too painful otherwise

Look…
It’s like you’re standing in the window
Of a house nobody lives in
And I’m sitting in a car across the way
(Let’s just say)
It’s an early model Chevrolet
(Let’s just say)
It’s a warm and windy day
You go and pack your sorrow
The trash man comes tomorrow
Leave it at the curb and we’ll just roll away

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Jackson Browne has released many songs over the years besides The Late Show. Jackson Browne released songs from 1967 to 2002 spanning across albums like The Nina Music Demo (Songs By Jackson Browne), Jackson Browne, For Everyman, Late For The Sky, The Pretender, Running On Empty, Hold Out, Lawyers In Love, Lives In The Balance, World In Motion, I'm Alive, Looking East, and The Naked Ride Home. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Jackson Browne.

If you're a fan of lyrics from 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1974 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and The Late Show by Jackson Browne

When you decide to study the lyrics to The Late Show, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1974 song by Jackson Browne. Some of the lyrics to The Late Show have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Jackson Browne and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

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

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