Lyrics to
Waiting For The End Of The World

This version of Waiting For The End Of The World was released by Elvis Costello in 1977.

Our Elvis Costello Songs profile has Waiting For The End Of The World lyrics from 1977 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.

The man from the television crawled into the train.
I wonder who he’s gonna stick it in this time.
Everyone was looking for a little entertainment,
so they’ll probably pull his hands off
when they find out his name.
And then they shut down the power all along the line,
and we got stuck in the tunnel where no lights shine.
They got to touching all the girls were to scared to call out.
Nobody was saying anything at all.
We were waiting for the end of the world,
waiting for the end of the world,
waiting for the end of the world.
Dear Lord I sincerely hope you’re coming
’cause you really started something.

Things got back to normal as the train began to roll again.
We got to the station about twenty minutes later.
The legendary hitchhiker says that he knows where it’s at.
Now he’d like to go to Spain or somewhere like that,
with his two-tone Bible and his funny cigarettes,
his suntan lotion and his castanets.

He was waiting for the end of the world,
waiting for the end of the world,
waiting for the end of the world.
Dear Lord I sincerely hope you’re coming
’cause you really started something.

And then the bride, the groom, the congregation and the priest
all got onto the train when we were three stations east, yeah.
Hiding from a scandal in the national press,
they had been trying to get married since they stole the wedding dress.
You may see them drowning as you stroll along the beach,
but don’t throw out the lifeline till they’re clean out of reach.

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Elvis Costello has released many songs over the years besides Waiting For The End Of The World. 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 1977 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Waiting For The End Of The World by Elvis Costello

The lyrics to Waiting For The End Of The World are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that Elvis Costello used when the song was created in 1977. The lyrics to Waiting For The End Of The World have both easy-to-spot meanings and hidden metaphors that have been discussed by the music press and fans, but only Elvis Costello 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 Waiting For The End Of The World by Elvis Costello. 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 Waiting For The End Of The World" means the words set to the music of Waiting For The End Of The World, 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 Waiting For The End Of The World and the lyrics to Waiting For The End Of The World 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 Waiting For The End Of The World, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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