The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
She lives in a house
That's way back off the road
There's a man with a lantern
And he carries her soul
A coal stove and a bed
A skillet and a hound
She drove a camel through a needle
In this sinking boardwalk town
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal
Wants to stay coal
I swang out wide with her
On hell's iron gate
Anything that you wanted
You could have
My eyes say their prayers to her
Sailors ring her bell
The way a moth mistakes a light bulb
For the moon and goes to hell
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal
Wants to stay coal
There's no prayer like desire
There's amnesia in her kiss
She's a swan and a pistol
And she will follow you like this
In Moberly, Missouri
At the Iroquois Hotel
She checked in with the President
And she ran up quite a Bill
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal
Wants to stay coal
Well, she's whiskey in a teacup
She gives blondes a lousy name
She's a Bonzai Aphrodite
And a ticket back to Spain
She's a hard way to go
And there ain't no way to stop
Everytime you play the red the black is coming up
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal (she's my baby)
She wants to stay coal (she's my baby)
My baby wants to stay coal, coal, coal
My baby wants to stay coal
That's way back off the road
There's a man with a lantern
And he carries her soul
A coal stove and a bed
A skillet and a hound
She drove a camel through a needle
In this sinking boardwalk town
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal
Wants to stay coal
I swang out wide with her
On hell's iron gate
Anything that you wanted
You could have
My eyes say their prayers to her
Sailors ring her bell
The way a moth mistakes a light bulb
For the moon and goes to hell
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal
Wants to stay coal
There's no prayer like desire
There's amnesia in her kiss
She's a swan and a pistol
And she will follow you like this
In Moberly, Missouri
At the Iroquois Hotel
She checked in with the President
And she ran up quite a Bill
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal
Wants to stay coal
Well, she's whiskey in a teacup
She gives blondes a lousy name
She's a Bonzai Aphrodite
And a ticket back to Spain
She's a hard way to go
And there ain't no way to stop
Everytime you play the red the black is coming up
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's my black-market baby (she's my baby)
She's a diamond who wants to stay coal (she's my baby)
She wants to stay coal (she's my baby)
My baby wants to stay coal, coal, coal
My baby wants to stay coal
Lyrics submitted by Dr_Colossus
Black Market Baby Lyrics as written by Thomas Alan Waits Kathleen Brennan
Lyrics © JALMA MUSIC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
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My 2 cents: "She's a black-market baby; she's a diamond that wants to stay coal" references something that could be brilliant if only it were given time and/or refinement, but is bound and determined to remain dark and dirty. Diamonds and coal are carbon. Diamond comes from coal put under extreme pressure.
You imagine this woman in the song as a woman who could that be classy, intelligent, and beautiful, but insists on being a sort of a dangerous, unwholesome, low-level prostitute. She does "check in with the president" but she does it at the "Iroquois Hotel" in "Moberly, Missouri." Moberly, MO is not the kind of place classy hookers hang out. It is not the kind of place a president would be allowed to stay in. I actually WORK in Moberly, Missouri and can tell you that it is itself a "black market baby - A diamond that wants to stay coal." Any resident there can tell you that many people have tried to improve the community, the school system etc..., but the mindset of the place aims at mediocrity. If Tom Waits chose this town simply because it had the right poetic sound, he also lucked out by choosing a town that reinforced his metaphor.
Sounds like he recorded it in a haunted house.
I haven't really thought about any deeper meaning of the lyrics, but this song always sends chills down my spine.
Another creepy song.
^^^That's funny. I'd never thought about that. I DID, however, think of the supposed Marilyn Monroe/JFK link and its alleged possible involvement in her Death.
It's probably my filthy mind, but I still think that when Waits sings "She checked in with the President/& she ran up quite a bill" he's making an unspeakably lewd reference to Mr Clinton.
@morbid morag More appropriate for Trump, 10 years later.