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Cancelled Check Lyrics
I hate to do this
but you're a pain in the neck
I thought you knew this
you're handing me a cancelled check
I heard you moaning
your girlfriends think you're a saint
I give you a quarter
I'll keep my judgements to myself
I get caught up in the moonlight
reaching out for a rotten egg
I don't wanna beg
it's crystal clear your time is nearly gone
stumbling religion
starting to get annoyed
you got momentum
building up in a void
stormy weather
the kids are makin a racket
you got some magic
conjuring up phony mystique
I get caught up in the moonlight
reaching out for a rotten egg
I don't wanna beg
it's crystal clear your time is nearly gone (x2)
...gone, gone, gone.
but you're a pain in the neck
I thought you knew this
you're handing me a cancelled check
I heard you moaning
your girlfriends think you're a saint
I give you a quarter
I'll keep my judgements to myself
reaching out for a rotten egg
I don't wanna beg
it's crystal clear your time is nearly gone
starting to get annoyed
you got momentum
building up in a void
stormy weather
the kids are makin a racket
you got some magic
conjuring up phony mystique
reaching out for a rotten egg
I don't wanna beg
it's crystal clear your time is nearly gone (x2)
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Hmm..I'd say this song is about a phony person who's "time is nearly gone" for this facade of "phony mystique". It's also about someone who's hypocritical: she complains a lot, hence the moaning, and yet her girlfriends think she's a saint.
Ok first of all let me not start....
The first part of the second verse REALLY reads as follows:
Count your blessings And do the things that you should All the has-beens That never had it so good.
they're just posting the original lyrics from the kcrw radio performance in 95' it's an old tune.
they're just posting the original lyrics from the kcrw radio performance in 95' it's an old tune.
i have the benefit of hearing beck talk about this song in an early interview on kcrw radio. he basically said that he was watching this infomercial and this motivational speaker came on. started talking about how the past is a canceled check and your maximum point of power is now. he related to that. and he wrote it about his life at the time. i don't think it's really directed at anyone. it was just kind of autobiographical.
the original 2nd verse is pretty good. wouldn't have wanted to miss "the wild lives are so mild," though
not sure what "stumbling religion" was intended to mean, in this context.
difficult to think of anything good to say about Scientologists. but those shitty schools they force their kids into (basically labor camps, which is what a lot of what CoS programs really are)...if it weren't for that, maybe Beck wouldn't have such a peculiar relationship with the English language. then we wouldn't have these deliciously oddball lyrics to ponder.
give Beck a break; he's a 2nd-generation Scientologist. the minute he popped out of the womb, he was being force-fed their doctrine (mostly mind-control techniques, cheap-ass lie detectors uh I mean E-meters...and a serious jones for easy money)