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House Where Nobody Lives Lyrics
There's a house on my block
That's abandoned and cold
Folks moved out of it a
Long time ago
And they took all their things
And they never came back
Looks like it's haunted
With the windows all cracked
And everyone call it
The house, the house where
Nobody lives
Once it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong?
Well the paint was all cracked
It was peeled off of the wood
Papers were stacked on the porch
Where I stood
And the weeds had grown up
Just as high as the door
There were birds in the chimney
And an old chest of drawers
Looks like no one will ever
Come back to the
House were nobody lives
Once it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do someone wrong?
So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold
Don't trade it for silver
Don't trade it for gold
I have all of life's treasures
And they are fine and they are good
They remind me that houses
Are just made of wood
What makes a house grand
Ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house
It's a palace for sure
Without love...
It ain't nothin but a house
A house where nobody lives
Without love it ain't nothin
But a house, a house where
Nobody lives.
That's abandoned and cold
Folks moved out of it a
Long time ago
And they took all their things
And they never came back
Looks like it's haunted
With the windows all cracked
And everyone call it
The house, the house where
Nobody lives
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong?
It was peeled off of the wood
Papers were stacked on the porch
Where I stood
And the weeds had grown up
Just as high as the door
There were birds in the chimney
And an old chest of drawers
Looks like no one will ever
Come back to the
House were nobody lives
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do someone wrong?
So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold
Don't trade it for silver
Don't trade it for gold
I have all of life's treasures
And they are fine and they are good
They remind me that houses
Are just made of wood
What makes a house grand
Ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house
It's a palace for sure
Without love...
It ain't nothin but a house
A house where nobody lives
Without love it ain't nothin
But a house, a house where
Nobody lives.
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This could possibly be Waits' greatest song ever, which is quite possibly calling it THE greatest song ever..
Tom Waits is amazing.
I love this song with all my heart. There's so much beauty in his music. This song is particularly profound.
Coming from someone that came from a broken home. This song is very deep for me. A happy home and family that you love very deeply, and of course love you back is the key to happiness. It is something that should be kept up and looked after and never taken for granted. That's what I think the song is about.
Tom Waits is a fucking poet. Everyone who reads this need to take a long, long listen to this groveling genius. He makes you question everything. For the love of god, please see him live if you ever have the chance...
A beautiful meditation on the relics of human lives. A house becomes a home when people inhabit it and really live there. The house becomes something of a battery, storing both positive and negative energy; and in a poetic sense it becomes alive. When abandoned, whether by the death of the tenants or the collapse of a family/relationship that energy lingers. In a sense it haunts itself with those stored emotions, and visitors to the house feel the effect without context --leading them to speculate about the cause of abandonment and the (perhaps) ghostly energies slowly dwindling over time.
Though this song isn't pitched to be precisely supernatural, it has a 'spiritual' sense about the house being like a shell of something once alive that has died. There is a deep sadness to it. For me, it recalls a house I stumbled upon while camping in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. It was so comprehensively overgrown and reclaimed by the forest that no one alive remembered the place's history. My young mind --already on a track to becoming the professional writer I now am-- kept revisiting that place in memory, telling and retelling imagined stories about why it was abandoned and what happened. I've since written several short stories about old, abandoned house, but Tom Waits, with the brevity and concision of a poet/songwriter captured it in a few lines of a song. Beautiful.
This is a great song. A sad song with a happy ending.