Elvis Costello - Coal Train Robberies lyrics

Yesterday's coal train came to rest in the bitter cutting

And as the signals took an age to change it was easy pickings

So you go to the movies where they smash it up

You want to feel your heart pumping it makes you feel good

All through the karaoke girls were squealing the hits

As another mercedes-benz gets blown to bits

While all the time in the camptown theatres of piccadilly

They're going to throw a black-face minstrel show for the barefoot children

That they're always selling

They'll say "it's quaint" as the guilty ones faint and claim they ain't underneath this paint

We interrupt these liberal saints with their whips and watermelon

Reports are coming in of a coal-train robbery

It's like another worldor it had better be

So we return to whitewashed pout of his committed lips

Since he was declared the long lost fountain

Of youth that drips and drips and drips

They'll be sending him round from door to door

To sell you back what's already yours

"so many good deedsso little time"

Say the advertising agency swine

When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns

I hope no living thing cries over his bones

If you don't believe that I'm going for good

You can count the days I'm gone and chop up

The chairs for firewood

Reports are coming in of a coal-train robbery

It's like another worldor it had better be