Leave the death ledger under city hall
Leave the joyful air in that rubber ball today
Just leave the lilac print on the linen sheet
Leave the birds you killed at your father's feet
Let the sideways rain in the crooked street remain
Leave the whimpering dog in his cold kennel
Leave the dead starlet on her pedestal
Leave the acid kids in their green fishbowls today
Leave the sad guitar in its hard-shell case
Leave the worried look on your lover's face
Let the orange embers in the fireplace remain
Cause everything it must belong somewhere
Oh a train off in the distance, bicycle chained to the stairs
Everything it must belong somewhere
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here
Leave the ocean's roar in the turquoise shell
Leave the widower in his private hell
Leave the liberty in that broken bell today
Just leave the epic poem on its yellowed page
Leave the gray macaw in his covered cage
Let the traveling band on the interstate remain
Cause everything it must belong somewhere
Sound-stage in California, televisions in Times Square, yeah
Everything it must belong somewhere
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here
Well I know that now that's why I'm staying here
Leave the secret talks on the trundle bed
Leave the garden tools in the rusted shed
Leave those bad ideas in your troubled head today
Just leave the restless ghost in his old hotel
Leave the homeless man out in that cardboard cell
Let the painted horse on the carousel remain
Cause everything it must belong somewhere
Just like the gold around her finger or the silver in his hair
Yeah, everything it must belong somewhere
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here
Oh, I know that now, that's why I'm staying here
In truth, the forest hears each sound
Each blade of grass as it lies down
The world requires no audience
no witnesses, no witnesses
Leave the old town drunk on his wooden stool
Leave the autumn leaves in their swimming pool
Leave the poor black child in his crumbling school today
Leave the novelist in his daydream tomb
Leave the scientist in her rubic's cube
Let the true genius in the padded room remain
Leave the horse's hair on the slanted bow
Leave the slot machines on the riverboat
Leave the cauliflower in the casserole today
Just leave the hot, bright trash in the shopping malls
Leave the hawks of war in their capitals
Let the organ's moan in the cathedral remain
Cause everything it must belong somewhere
They locked the devil in the basement, threw God up into the air.
Yeah, everything must belong somewhere
You know it's true, I wish you'd leave me here
You know it's true, why don't you leave me here?
I chose to analyze the song named "Everything Must Belong Somewhere" by Bright Eyes. In this song I found a pattern of “leave the…” and “let the…”. There is one “let the…” after each five “leave the…”. Most of the song rhymes, such as “wall” and “hall”, “kennel” and “pedestal”, “case” and “face”, “somewhere” and “stairs”, “somewhere” and “here”, “shell” and “hell”, “page” and “cage”, “somewhere” and “Times Square”, “bed” and “shed”, “hotel” and “cell”, “sound” and “down”, “audience” and “witnesses”, “stool” and “pool”, “tomb” and “cube”, “bow” and “river boat”.
In this song, “everything must belong somewhere” is repeated eight times, “I know that now, that's why I'm staying here” is repeated sixteen times. Almost all the format of the lyrics in this song is “leave the…in…”. It shows that the singer wants to say that everything must belong somewhere so just leave it there. At the end of the song, the singer sings “You know it's true, I wish you'd leave me here
You know it's true, why don't you leave me here?”, the singer wants to say that everything must belong somewhere and so does I but you didn’t leave here as I wished.
You know it's true, why don't you leave me here?”, the singer wants to say that everything must belong somewhere and so does I but you didn’t leave here as I wished.
Alice, you are noticing a good pattern here with the "leave the" and "let the." But the instructions asked you to look beyond rhyme and repetition of a chorus because they are just so common in songs that they don't really help us see the inside of the song. if you take those parts out of this analysis, there's very little left. Instead of listing all the words that rhyme, try looking in detail at the images here. What patterns do you notice in the kinds of images Oberst uses? Are they all things that truly belong in the places he talks about? What might the songwriter be suggesting with this long list of things and where they belong? You might also look at how each "leave the..." line is set up - what pattern do you see in the parts of speech that make up each image?
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