Elvis Costello Coal-Train Robberies lyrics

Yesterday's coal train came to rest in the bitter cutting
And while the signals took an age to change it was easy pickings
So you go to the movies where they smash it up
You want to feel your heart pumping it makes you feel good
All through the karaoke girls were squealing the hits
While another Mercedes-Benz gets blown to bits

While all the time in the camp town theaters of Piccadilly
They're going to throw a black-face minstrel show
For the barefoot children, they're always selling
They'll say it's quaint as the guilty ones faint
And claim they ain't underneath this paint
We interrupt these liberal saints with their whips and watermelon

Reports are comin' in of a coal-train robbery
It's like another world or it had better be

So if we return to the whitewashed pout of his committed lips
Since he was declared the long lost fountain
Of youth that drips and drips and drips

They'll be sending him 'round from door to door
To sell you back what's already yours

So many good deeds, so little time
Say the advertising agency swine
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones
If you don't believe that I'm going for good
You can count the days I'm gone an' chop up the chairs for firewood

Reports are comin' in of a coal-train robbery
It's like another world or it had better be
Reports are comin' in of a coal-train robbery
It's like another world or it had better be

Reports, reports, reports, reports