Lyrics to
When The Levee Breaks

This version of When The Levee Breaks was released by Led Zeppelin in 1971.

Our Decade Lyrics Led Zeppelin profile has all of the When The Levee Breaks lyrics from 1971 and many more songs from the Led Zeppelin discography that we have on file.

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If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When The Levee Breaks I’ll have no place to stay.

Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.

Don’t it make you feel bad
When you’re tryin’ to find your way home,
You don’t know which way to go?
If you’re goin’ down South
They go no work to do,
If you don’t know about Chicago.

Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
Now, cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

All last night sat on the levee and moaned,
Thinkin’ about me baby and my happy home.
Going, going to Chicago… Going to Chicago… Sorry but I can’t take you…
Going down… going down now… going down….

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Led Zeppelin has released many songs over the years besides When The Levee Breaks. Led Zeppelin released songs from 1969 to 1982 spanning across albums like Led Zeppelin I, Led Zeppelin II, Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV, Houses Of The Holy, Physical Graffiti, Presence, In Through The Out Door, and Coda. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Led Zeppelin.

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About Lyrics and When The Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin

The lyrics for When The Levee Breaks are made up of the words, verses and background chorus for the popular 1971 song by Led Zeppelin. Like a lot of songs, the lyrics to When The Levee Breaks have both direct meanings and metaphorical context hidden within the song's words. All of the meanings are only truly known by the creators of the lyrics for When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin and any of the writers who worked with them on the song.

If you have an interest in the structure of words and phrases, you can dissect the lyrics to When The Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin in multiple ways. 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 When The Levee Breaks" means the words set to the music of When The Levee Breaks, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Led Zeppelin. 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 When The Levee Breaks and the lyrics to When The Levee Breaks are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Led Zeppelin who came here looking just for the lyrics to When The Levee Breaks, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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