Stick Out Your Tongue
Unveiling Society's Venom: Elvis Costello's Tale of Hypocrisy and Desperation
Lyrics
They talked to the sister, the father and the mother
Media or reporters interviewing family members
With a microphone in one hand and a chequebook in the other
Journalists with a microphone and money
And the camera noses in to the tears on her face
Camera focusing on someone's tears
The tears on her face
Repetition emphasizes the tears and a suggestion that media can fix them
The tears on her face
-You can put them back together with your paper and paste
-Stick out your tongue
Directive to show defiance or resistance
Drink down the venom
Accepting or enduring criticism or negativity
She sleeps with the shirt of a late, great country singer
Details about a woman's sentimental attachment and the potential to turn obsessions into success
Stretched out upon her poor jealous husband's pillow
-In time you can turn these obsessions into careers
-While the parents of those kidnapped children start the bidding for their tears
Parents bidding for the return of kidnapped children
What would you say?
Questions about reactions in difficult situations involving innocence
What would you do?
-Children and animals two by two
-Give me the needle
Requests for harmful items to be used for questionable purposes
Give me the rope
-We're going to melt them down for pills and soap
-Four and twenty crowbars, jemmy your desire
Metaphorical imagery indicating the pursuit of desires and power, referencing privilege and excess
Out of the frying pan into the fire
-The king is in the counting house
-Some folk have all the might
-And majesty will run on Bombay Gin and German spite
-They come from lovely people
People with contradictions and tears of failure among the upper class
(They come from lovely people)
-With a hard line in hypocrisy
-There are tears of mediocrity
-For the fag ends of the aristocracy
-What would you say?
Reiterating previous lines about reactions to difficult situations and harmful actions
What would you do?
-Children and animals two by two
-Give me the needle
-Give me the rope
-We're going to melt them down for pills and soap
-Stick out your tongue, stick out your tongue
Repetition of a directive to resist or challenge
Stick out your tongue, stick out your tongue
-Drink down the venom
-The sugar-coated pill is getting bitterer still
Describing disillusionment with one's country and reliance on shallow distractions and media
You think your country needs you but you know it never will
-So pack up your troubles in a stolen handbag
-Don't dilly dally boys rally 'round the flag
-Give us our daily bread, give us our daily bread, in individual slices, in individual slices
-And something in the daily rag to cancel any crisis
-What would you say?
Reiterating questions about reactions and actions, highlighting deceit and obsolescence of the elite
What would you do?
-(Did you find out how to lie?)
-Children and animals two by two
-(Did you find out how to cheat?)
-Give me the needle
-(The elite bleat, they're obsolete)
-We're going to melt them down for
-Stick out your tongue
-(We're going to melt them down for pills and soap)
Repetitive directive to challenge or resist while sarcastically suggesting submission
Now if you'd only genuflect, now if you'd only genuflect
-Stick out your tongue, stick out your tongue
-Now if you'd only genuflect
-Stick out your tongue, stick out your tongue, stick out your tongue, stick out your tongue
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