I can't feel this way much longer
Expecting to survive
With all these hidden innuendoes
Just waiting to arrive

It's such a wavy midnight
And you slip into insane
Electric angel rock and roller
I hear what you're playin'

It's an orangy sky
Always it's some other guy
It's just a broken lullaby
Bye bye love
Bye bye love
Bye bye love
Bye bye love

Substitution mass confusion
Clouds inside your head
Involving all my energies
Until you visited

With your eyes of porcelain and of blue
They shock me into sense
You think you're so illustrious
You call yourself intense

It's an orangy sky
Always it's some other guy
It's just a broken lullaby
Bye bye love
Bye goo' bye love
bye bye love
Bye bye love

Substitution mass confusion
Clouds inside your head
Well, foggin' all my energies
Until you visited

With your eyes of porcelain and of blue
They shock me into sense
You think you're so illustrious
You call yourself intense

It's an orangy sky
Always it's some other guy
It's just a broken lullaby
Bye bye love
Bye bye love
Bye bye love
Bye bye love


Lyrics submitted by ledzepp115

Bye Bye Love Lyrics as written by Ric Ocasek

Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

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Bye Bye Love song meanings
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  • +1
    General Comment

    It's hard to find a song from the era with a more earnest expression of feeling. There's beauty here and pain, and then some more beauty. After hundreds (maybe thousands of listens), it's striking to me to see how incomplete the narration is: We get impression after impression of how the woman seems to the man, but no more than the slightest hint of how he seems to her, how they have interacted, what their history is, or how that is changing.

    In line after line, we are told how he sees her and how he hears her, but he is virtually absent from the narration, like he's a camera watching her, and responding internally, and then reporting his internal feeling to us, but not necessarily to her, like he's infatuated and deeply introverted. What's clear is that it isn't going well for him; the innuendo and the "other guy" indicate that he's either at risk of losing her or perhaps he never had her, but whichever it is, he's so wrapped up in the angst of this perfect woman being unattainable that he's not sure he can "survive."

    It's clear that they are in some sort of recurring social situation. At midnight, music is playing: Are they out as a couple, or as two single people in a larger group? They get close enough for him to look into her eyes, and for him to hear her describe herself. His admiration for her looks and her vivacity are undercut by apparent bitterness that she has such a positive self image. At song's end, it's still not clear: Are they in a failing relationship? Is it an unrequited crush? Is "Bye bye" her possible departure from a relationship or is it him silently and privately giving up on a one-sided infatuation that he hasn't even told her about? Maybe things would have a chance if he opened up and told her. On the other hand, if he's just infatuated with her looks and thinks she's stuck on herself, maybe he's being too shallow.

    What the lyrics don't show is the soaring, energetic, and triumphant solos from the instruments, in counterpoint to the painful romantic dynamic. Maybe the song's highest calling is telling the lyricist – and the listener – that there are things to look forward to even when one romance or another doesn't work out.

    This is a song I've called my favorite. Thanks for the good times, Ric Ocasek, and R.I.P.

    rikdad101@yahoo.comon November 14, 2019   Link

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