This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
Love bird, you flew into my window
Now in the sticky love nest sits a widow
The tree it fell on all the people
Gathered there to watch it topple
Now turn around, it's burning down
The city we live in
Should we mumble lies?
Take them by surprise?
Let them have their way with us?
Wounds be by old enemies
Broke my heart to see
Foundations ripped apart
And investments fade away
I guess we got off to a bad start
No oxygen
What is the outcome?
Hungry humans
We've got to enslave them
We'll burn those bridges
When we come to them
I'm not just their leader
I'm also one of them
The food supply has been depleted
The river's ran dry just when it was needed
The rats come out to take it over
Singing, squeaking, "We built this city"
It's hard to breathe
But we couldn't leave
Nowhere left to go
Almost everybody died
Drank the tears from those who cried
We shriveled from the sodium
And a map was found with an X on it
So we followed it there
And what did we find?
An underground design
As we entered in to our surprise
Oxygen
Rivers of playgrounds ?
The ancients just stayed down
They never stopped moving
We stumbled towards them
But they locked all the barn doors
So we had to dig deeper
We had to dig deeper
And the deep was dark
I wanted to sleep forever
Wake up later, maybe never
We had to build a civilization
Let the planet focus on the planet's rotation
We tried, we tried
We really tried
But no one could do it
Happily alive
Never learned how to survive
We were humans being useless
No oxygen
What is the outcome?
Hungry humans
We've got to enslave them
We'll burn those bridges
When we come to them
I'm not just their leader
I'm also one of them
We're freed into oblivion
No traces of civilized living eating the earth
We're fading to oblivion
No traces of civilized living eaten by earth
Now in the sticky love nest sits a widow
The tree it fell on all the people
Gathered there to watch it topple
Now turn around, it's burning down
The city we live in
Should we mumble lies?
Take them by surprise?
Let them have their way with us?
Wounds be by old enemies
Broke my heart to see
Foundations ripped apart
And investments fade away
I guess we got off to a bad start
No oxygen
What is the outcome?
Hungry humans
We've got to enslave them
We'll burn those bridges
When we come to them
I'm not just their leader
I'm also one of them
The food supply has been depleted
The river's ran dry just when it was needed
The rats come out to take it over
Singing, squeaking, "We built this city"
It's hard to breathe
But we couldn't leave
Nowhere left to go
Almost everybody died
Drank the tears from those who cried
We shriveled from the sodium
And a map was found with an X on it
So we followed it there
And what did we find?
An underground design
As we entered in to our surprise
Oxygen
Rivers of playgrounds ?
The ancients just stayed down
They never stopped moving
We stumbled towards them
But they locked all the barn doors
So we had to dig deeper
We had to dig deeper
And the deep was dark
I wanted to sleep forever
Wake up later, maybe never
We had to build a civilization
Let the planet focus on the planet's rotation
We tried, we tried
We really tried
But no one could do it
Happily alive
Never learned how to survive
We were humans being useless
No oxygen
What is the outcome?
Hungry humans
We've got to enslave them
We'll burn those bridges
When we come to them
I'm not just their leader
I'm also one of them
We're freed into oblivion
No traces of civilized living eating the earth
We're fading to oblivion
No traces of civilized living eaten by earth
Lyrics submitted by Tight_Eyez, edited by Tyree
Humans Lyrics as written by Nicholas Shanahan Thorburn
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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Yeah, Islands are great. Unicorns were great too. Good stuff all around.
Saw Islands live last month and they played lots of new stuff. It sounded awesome, absolutely great.
Anyway, this song is clearly about some end-of-the-world situation. Seems like a recurring theme, what with "Volcanoes" and all.