Lyrics to
Three Miles Down

This version of Three Miles Down was released by Gil Scott-Heron in 1978.

Our Gil Scott-Heron Songs profile has Three Miles Down lyrics from 1978 and most if not all of the lyrics by Gil Scott-Heron that we have here at Decade Lyrics.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to Gil Scott-Heron or about the 1970s in general.

Here come the mine cars; it’sdamn near dawn.
Another shift of men, some of my friends, comin’ on.
Hard to imagine workin’ in the mines;
Coal dust in your lungs, on your skin and on your mind.
I’ve listened to the speeches,
but it occours to me politicians just don’t understand;
the thoughts of isolation, ain’t no sunshine underground.
It’s like workin’ in a graveyard three miles down.

Damn near a legend as old as the mines:
things that happen in the pits just don’t change with the times.
Work ’till you’re exhausted in too little spacwe.
a history of desastrous fears etched on your face.
Somebody signs a paper, ev’ry body thinks it’s fine,
but Taft and Hartley ain’t done one day in the mines.
You start to stiffen! You heard a crackin’ sound!
It’s like workin’ in a graveyard three miles down.

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Gil Scott-Heron has released many songs over the years besides Three Miles Down. Gil Scott-Heron released songs from 1970 to 2005 spanning across albums like Small Talk At 125th And Lenox, Pieces Of A Man, Free Will, Winter In America, The First Minute Of A New Day, It's Your World, From South Africa To South Carolina, Bridges, Secrets, The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron, 1980, Real Eyes, Reflections, Moving Target, Spirits, and Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Messages (Anthology). Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Gil Scott-Heron.

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

About Lyrics and Three Miles Down by Gil Scott-Heron

When you decide to study the lyrics to Three Miles Down, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1978 song by Gil Scott-Heron. Some of the lyrics to Three Miles Down have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Gil Scott-Heron and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

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

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