Goodbye Cruel World lyrics

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The Only Flame In Town

I know a girl got my mind in a mess
I never heard her say goodnight and God bless
She's not the only flame in town

And when we're alone, we never quarrel
I'm miles away, now here's the moral
She's not the only flame in town

She's not the only flame in town
She's got to stop thinking that I'm carrying this torch around

He struck a match and it lit up her face
We should have struck a match, girl
To burn down the whole place
Now you're not the only flame in town

But you blew hot and cold
Turned my heart to a cinder
And with each passing day
You're less tender and more tinder
Now you're not the only flame in town

She's not the only flame in town
She's got to stop thinking that I'm carrying this torch around
You're not the only flame
You're not the only flame

Thought I saw your face in the fire
But it's so hard to remember
Even an inferno can cool down to an ember
Now you're not the only flame
You're not the only flame
You're not the only flame in town


Home Truth

I hung up the phone tonight
Just as you said "I love you"
Once this would have been coincidence
Now these things start to bother me
You still close your eyes when I kiss you
And I close mine too
But we didn't open them again
Quite as wide as we should

This is where the home truth ends
This is where the home truth ends

Does your touch feel the same as it should do
Or is it someone quite similar
Who killed me with kindness last night
Now do I look at all familiar?
But none of these things seem to matter
Since we've grown apart
I'd put back the pieces of what's shattered
But I don't know where to start

This is where the home truth ends
This is where the home truth ends

This is where the home truth ends
And I feel like a clown
It's tearing me up
It's tearing me down

You say which are the lies that you tell me
Well, where do I begin?
So I turn on the TV again
And the world comes crashing in
Is it my shirt or my toothpaste
That is whiter than white?
Is it the lies that I tell you
Or the lies that I might?

This is where the home truth ends
This is where the home truth ends

This is where the home truth ends


Room With No Number

Picture a hotel room
Clothes scattered across the floor
Covers pulled back from the pillow
A sign hung on the door
Two lovers locked up tight
Through the endless days and nights
Hiding something they can't show
Something no one else must know

Chorus:
There's a room without a number
While the sign outside says there's no vacancy
As you take your key, they smile at you so understandingly

She cried out in the night
Woke the porter from his sleep
He grinned slyly to himself
As he went to fetch his keys
Look what love has brought them to
This terrible nightmare
His or hers, he could not tell
As they were sleeping there

(Chorus)

And I wish you could be
The man he was before he was me

A girl arrived at first light
And enquired if they'd been seen
And why the numbers ran from twelve
Missing out thirteen
And they said oh my darling
Put it down to superstition
Try to avoid a scandal
And don't arouse suspicion
They re-arranged the furniture
They even papered over the door

There's a room without a number
While the sign outside says there's no vacancy
As you take your key, they smile just so so you know

There's a room without a number
While the sign outside says there's no vacancy
As you take your key, they smile just so so you know

(Chorus)


Inch By Inch

You can take a powder
You can take a drink
You can keep the shrink
And the kitchen sink
Write my name in heaven in invisible ink
I just woke up from dreaming, I think

You can take me over
You can give me a lip
You can take me under
You can give me the slip
Take off everything or tear me off a strip
Like a lady in the chamber and another in the clip

Chorus:
Don't move a muscle, baby
Don't even flinch
You can miss me by a mile
Or just inch by inch
Inch by inch
Inch by inch, Inch by inch
You can pull me up again inch by inch
Inch by inch, as pulses race
I long to see that look upon your face

You can take me outside
You can take me apart
You can take me upstairs
You can take me to heart
You made me love you when you thought you were smart
Don't try to stop me now you told me to start

(Chorus)

I long to see that look upon your face
I long to see that look upon your face


Worthless Thing

How many times can you jump out of the cupboard
Before someone gets suspicious or someone gets discovered
You can live forever in a split second of fame
Come on down, the price is right, what's your name
While a crocodile makes good shoes and a dog may change his coat
I can't change what's written on your face tonight and I quote

Chorus:
Oh I wish you could see
Quite how much you could mean to me
You worthless thing
If you were ten feet taller and almost handsome
I might pay this king's ransom
You worthless thing

They commit blue murder along Union Avenue
Then they sell you souvenir matches
Nightclubs full of grave robbers from Memphis, Tennessee
And Las Vegas body snatchers
And he's carrying a warning, can't you see how his eyes glint?
Keep your bloody hands off my life, your affectionate fingerprint

(Chorus)

All the cars and pills and girls who tore his shirt to tatters
Do you know how tall he was 'cos that is all that really matters?
Do you know his mother's last name, do you think that he's divine?
You've seen the film, you've read the book
You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine

Bored out of your tiny mind while life is twice as large
They'll cut her down to size on television
She's available and beautiful, but with more time to devote
They're going to take this cable now and stick it down your throat
So this is an obituary which should be right and fitting
For every clockwork cat and conceivable kitten

(Chorus)


Love Field

You lie so unfolded
In a love field
With your contempt for any modesty
In a love field

In a love field
In a love field
You yield with your lips still sealed
In a love field

Lost in a sea of imaginary women
Everything you'd want from the dawn to the dimming

Breath comes sharp and heart beats faster
In a love field
Cold ground for a pillow under a blanket of stars
In a love field

In a love field
In a love field
Headlights that startled this embrace of ours
In a love field

In a crooked house where things can be arranged
You think you're different from the rest
But you don't know how you've changed

Under an archway on a road of white linen
In a love field
Feel the anxious rhythm of a functional stranger
In a love field

In a love field
In a love field
She's so tense but it's never mentioned
In a love field
In a love field
In a love field


I Wanna Be Loved


Why must I be so lonely?
When so many people pass me by
I've been waiting for oh so long now
And yet I'm unable to answer why
I can't be made to give up now
Can you find room for me in your heart somehow?

I wanna be loved
I just wanna be loved

I guess I'm a victim of loneliness
But why should this be my destiny?
A foolish man for a lot of my life
Shouldn't there be someone
Someone for me?
I hope and I pray some happy day
That I'll be around to hear you say

I wanna be loved
I just wanna be loved


The Comedians

I fell under such gentle persuasion
You can't refuse it's like a home from home
Meanwhile in the motorcar kingdom
They're finding that all that glitters is not chrome
The social circle have these cardiac complaints
Their hearts are empty when their hands are full
All these new found fond acquaintances
Turn out to be the red rag to my bull

Chorus:
And I'm up while the dawn is breaking
Even though my heart is aching
I should be drinking a toast to absent friends
Instead of these comedians

I've looked into these eyes upon reflection
They've seen the face of love, they've seen a few
What kind of love is this upon inspection
You'll be the last to know who's fooling who

(Chorus)


Joe Porterhouse

The children sit upon the stairs
High above a valley of tears
Don't let them see you crying that way, oh no

Oh no, Joe Porterhouse is not gone forever
He'll be back another day
Don't let them see you crying that way

Chorus:
Please don't wake him let him sleep
It's a moment she can keep
Like an old bus ticket or a photograph
Resting on the mantlepiece
While for the wicked, there is no peace
She says it's not his time to go
Why we were nearly lovers years ago
Now what is left for me
Among the broken branches of the family tree

Heart like an anchor, arms like cable
He stood all alone on an iron turntable
Don't let them see you crying that way, oh no

The sun beats down, it's cracking the flags
Boys who should know better are stamping out fags
Don't let them see you laughing that way

(Chorus)

Oh no, Joe Porterhouse is not gone forever
He'll be back another day
Don't let them see you crying that way


Sour Milk-Cow Blues

You like coffee and you like tea
Much more than you like me
And everybody says watch out, yeah
For the sour milk-cow blues

You like your coffee just a little too sweet
Without your sugar, life is incomplete
And everybody says watch out, yeah
For the sour milk-cow blues

I think about you everyday
Something about you is not the same
Something about the things you say
Sounds like a different woman with a different name
Sour milk-cow blues
Sour milk-cow blues

You wear a different size and style of shoe
I think that someone must be poisoning you
To replace you with a living double
Get out of my life right now and save them all of the trouble

They changed your complexion and your personality
Somebody's putting ideas in your head
They took the girl of my dreams and left you here instead
Sour milk-cow blues
Sour milk-cow blues

You take your place in this parade of pleas
You dial a number and they offer relief
All alone with just your own device
They give you something and it isn't advice
To break the hearts of a million listeners
Start out as lovers and you end up as prisoners
Somebody's suffering from the things that you do
Somebody's suffering but you're glad it isn't you

Put your fingertips up to the screen
Repeat after me, wake at the count of three
Now I don't know which is worse
What they're doing to you or what you're doing to me
Sour milk-cow blues
Sour milk-cow blues

Sour milk-cow blues
Sour milk-cow blues


The Great Unknown

They took old Danny Boy for a ride
From the arms of his bride to be
Threw him into the murky waters
By the dog biscuit factory
Quick dry the tears and stifle the cheers
As he sinks just like a stone
Footprints set in sentimental cement
Now burden down his bones
Lest we forget
Here lies the Great Unknown

My my my Delilah
Who's the butcher that you harbour
Take the rich man to the cleaners
And the strong man to the barber
From her face down to her torso
Sort of gruesome, only more so
Hooks and eyes, fingers and thumbs
Ladies and gentlemen, here she comes
The Great Unknown

Chorus:
What shall we sing at a wedding or a wake
Whose name shall we cherish and for whose sake

Now this year's cannon fodder
Tell the future general's jokes
They were keeping the home fires burning
As we slipped out for a smoke
Though the VIP's sang "Wooden Heart"
The band played "Hearts of Oak"

(Chorus)

And come the day I shall perish all alone
Say here lies the Great Unknown


The Deportees Club

In the Arrivederci Roma nightclub, bar and grill
Standing in the fibreglass ruins watching time stand still
All your troubles you confess to another faceless backless dress
Schnapps chianti porter and ouzo
Pernod vodka sambuca, I love you so
Deportee

Tatty beauty talking in riddles
Rome burns down everybody's on the fiddle
Two thousand dollars for a wife and some class
A thousand years drowned in a chaser glass
How I wish that she was mine
I could have been a king in six/eight time
Schnapps chianti porter and ouzo
Pernod vodka sambuca, I love you so
Deportee

It's a brittle charm but she's had enough
Still she wrote her number on his paper cuff
You don't know where to start or where to stop
All this pillow talk is nothing more than talking shop

When I came here tonight my pockets were overflowing
They took my return ticket without me even knowing
I pray to the saints and all the martyrs
For the secret life of Frank Sinatra
But none of these things have come to pass
In America the law is a piece of ass
I'm a deportee

Schnapps chianti porter and ouzo
Pernod vodka sambuca, I love you so


Peace In Our Time

Out of the aeroplane stepped Chamberlain with a condemned man's stare
But we all cheered wildly, a photograph was taken,
As he waved a piece of paper in the air
Now the Disco Machine lives in Munich and we are all friends
And I slip on my Italian dancing shoes as the evening descends

And the bells take their toll once again in victory chime
And we can thank God that we've finally got peace in our time

There's a man going round taking names no matter who you claim to be
As innocent as babies, a mad dog with rabies, you're still a part of some conspiracy
Meanwhile there's a light over the ocean burning brighter than the sun
And a man sits alone in a bar and says "Oh God, what have we done?"

And the bells take their toll once again in victory chime
And we can thank God that we've finally got peace in our time

They're lighting a bonfire upon every hilltop in the land
Just another tiny island invaded when he's got the whole world in his hands
And the Heavyweight Champion fights in the International Propaganda Star Wars
There's already one spaceman in the White House what do you want another one for?

And the bells take their toll once again in victory chime
And we can thank God that we've finally got peace in our time

<< Punch The Clock King Of America >>
Goodbye Cruel World
GCW album cover large.jpg
Released1984
ProducerClive Langer & Alan Winstanley
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