Lyrics to
Two Little Hitlers

This version of Two Little Hitlers was released by Elvis Costello in 1979.

Our Elvis Costello Songs profile has Two Little Hitlers lyrics from 1979 and most if not all of the lyrics by Elvis Costello that we have here at Decade Lyrics.

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

Why are we racing to be so old?
I’m up late pacing the floor
I won’t be told
You have your reservations
I’m bought and sold

I’ll face the music
I’ll face the facts
Even when we walk in polka dots and chequer slacks

Bowing and squawking
Running after titbits
Bobbing and squinting
Just like a nitwit

Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
One little Hitler does the other one’s will
I will return
I will not burn
Down in the basement

I need my head examined
I need my eyes excited
I’d like to join the party
But I was not invited
You make a member of me
I’ll be delighted

I wouldn’t cry for lost souls, you might drown
Dirty words for dirty minds
Written in a toilet town

Dial me a Valentine
She’s a smooth operator
It’s all so calculated
She’s got a calculator
She’s my soft touch typewriter
And I’m the great dictator

A simple game of self-respect
You flick a switch and the world goes off
Nobody jumps as you expect
I would have thought you would have had enough by now

You call selective dating
For some effective mating
I thought I’d let you down, dear
But you were just deflating

I knew right from the start
We’d end up hating
Pictures of the merchandise
Plastered on the wall
We can look so long as we don’t have to talk at all

You say you’ll never know him
He’s an unnatural man
He doesn’t want your pleasure
He wants as no one can
He wants to know the names of
All those he’s better than

I will return
I will not burn

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Elvis Costello has released many songs over the years besides Two Little Hitlers. Elvis Costello released songs from 1977 to 2004 spanning across albums like My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy!!, Trust, Almost Blue, Imperial Bedroom, Punch The Clock, Goodbye Cruel World, Blood And Chocolate, King Of America, Spike, Mighty Like A Rose, The Juliet Letters, Brutal Youth, Kojak Variety, Deep Dead Blue, All This Useless Beauty, Painted From Memory, For The Stars, When I Was Cruel, North, and The Delivery Man. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Elvis Costello.

If you're a fan of 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1979 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Two Little Hitlers by Elvis Costello

When you decide to study the lyrics to Two Little Hitlers, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1979 song by Elvis Costello. Some of the lyrics to Two Little Hitlers have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Elvis Costello and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

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

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