PROTEST THE HERO LYRICS

1. C'est La Vie

Stepped off a chair so he could learn to let loose,
learn to let loose before the pendulum wore off
His final sound a gurgle and a cough
And his final words “the pendulum wore off”
Stepped off a building to find concrete evidence,
concrete evidence that he’d ever make an impact
Fiction splattered into fact
And his fiction splattered into another sidewalk painting on display
Stepped off a bridge so he could make a splash,
to make a splash he had to flounder like a fish out of water
Another lamb that chose the slaughter
Stepped off a chair so he could learn to let loose,
learn to let loose before the pendulum wore off
His final sound a gurgle and a cough
Stepped off a platform and briefly made the news,
made the news and made the trains run fifteen minutes late
Oh what a price to pay to be the author of your fate
The trains were fifteen minutes late (to be the author of your fate)
C’est la vie! A drooling old bitch and a house full of lies
C’est la vie! The little things that kill you make you glad to be alive
C’est la vie! Disease in your genes and ocean levels on the rise
C’est la vie! Sing a song of living before everybody dies

2. Hair-Trigger

That sweet little redhead's got her hooks in my back
she points her finger and she shows me what i lack
her pale skin, it burns so hot in the midnight air
She paints the streets a shade of gray around my chair so come on in

Her hot breath on my skin
Her scent on my fingers
Her taste is on my mind
It constantly lingers

'Till I can breathe her
'Till I can believe her
'Till I can breathe her
'Till I can leave her

every kiss is a little sickening
i can feel death's fingers quickening
tightening my passage ways
If you can't count the years
Start counting days

Try to remember that she hates you
And though she might elate you
She tries to kill the great that's in you now
She's hand picked the fate that awaits you now
And despite her words, it's not too late

I wrote a Goddamn love song to praise everything I hate
And kids were wanting the chorus line
And they sealed my picture's frame
She might run shit for right now but I'll be damned if it's forever and always

As the chorus-line fades away like friends in high-school hallways

Oh, I got this feeling
That things will never, ever, ever be the same
Things will never be the same

What about those rainy nights in London?
What about the crippling desert heat?
What about all those times you swore you'd never leave me?
What about the hospital in L.A.?
You took me back after that night
What about that blackened image in my mind?
I swear I burn with a new light
What about that frozen, dripping, holiday bird that's cold
She's cold as ice!

3. Tandem

Everyone knows that Cancer
Takes bites of every family
And it eats up families whole

Dance around the issue
Take issue with the answers provided
The past few years radiate with treatment
But to every day she'll put her cap on and greet them
She's got demons but you'll never meet them
Yeah we hope one day that she can finally beat them all

She laughs for us
She laughs so we don't worry
She smiles through the pain
And keeps the details blurry

My intentions are not to expose
The depths of her trouble aren't mine to disclose
But like evening rain on the petal of a rose
It drips down to the earth and begins to compose

And if there's one thing that remains
So crystal clear to us
It's that the wandering hands of the gods
Are so goddamn mysterious

Like there could be a justification
For the lives it takes and the lives that it's taken

This isn't a eulogy
Or a requiem
Just some words I've sketched out
Cause I haven't said them
This isn't about her father or brother
Just a few simple words so she knows that I love her
And tragedy will never disaffect her
I hope she knows how much I respect her

My intentions are not to expose, in verse or in prose
The depths of her troubles aren't mine to disclose
But like evening rain on the petal of a rose
It drips down to the earth and begins to compose

A song worth singing
A wound that keeps on stinging
And one sinking feeling
That's always worth clinging onto
And a stone in a glass house
That's always worth slinging

She laughs for us
She laughs so we don't worry
She smiles through the pain
And keeps the details blurry

My intentions are not to expose
The depths of her trouble aren't mine to disclose
But like evening rain on the petal of a rose
It drips down to the earth and begins to compose

Saints walk the earth
They don't patrol the skies
They're the people right behind you
Riding tandem through the night
It's the comfort that's discovered
Between two sets of eyes
It's the hand that stills the other
That shakes like candlelight
Like candlelight

4. Moonlight

Yawn awake
Familiar surroundings
All hotel rooms are pretty much the same
Although the room number might change
Catch a glimpse of everything within the lighter's flame

There's always a window, but so changes the view
Affording a clue to the answer that's owing
Where we might be and where we might be going

There's no fixed address but the van, white as a suburb
Catch a reflection in store windows
As we're headed in any direction
So press your head against the window
look outside at emptiness

Tell a joke, or take a piss
Take a picture at every mile
Lock the door and start the engine Quince it's gonna be a while
Tell a joke, take a piss
Take a picture at every mile
Start the van, close the door, Quince I think it's gonna be a while

The climates flay themselves
Undress themselves at the side of the road
Commute at the union between failure and hope

Weave a highway line to stitch a skirt out on the land
Twist and turn, and tell a story like the palm of your hand
Ponder awe and wonder, keep watching the skies
Wonder awe, and ponder in the blink of an eye

The climates flay themselves
Undress themselves at the side of the road
Commute at the union between failure and hope

Turn our weakness into
Turn our blindness into
Turn our questions into answers as obvious
Turn our weakness into might, oh
Turn our blindness into sight
Turn our questions into answers just as obvious
As moonlight in the darkest, darkest night

5. Tapestry

And what a fucking waste of a day
We just lay around and waste away
Because when that sun goes down it's bottoms up
We try to reach the bottom of the endless cup

Everybody's getting older, but no one's growing up

As the weather's getting colder, the room starts heating up

Cam's hair just keeps falling out and Chris just keeps getting fatter
But from where I sit now, on this rickety stool
None of that shit really matters because
This is our Versailles
Palace on the swamp

Listen to me for a nominal fee you can have anything you want
What matters the most is the bad joke ghost
Circling your floating corpse at the end of the haunt

Never forming pleasantry

I'm so drunk I can't feel a thing

Pledge your allegiance to the fucking swamp king

Drunk as hell
Dumb as all get out
So pucker up those pretty lips of yours and
Kiss my ass and shut your mouth

Sometimes a knife right through your heart is exactly what you need
Sometimes the things that your ashamed of make you who you're supposed to be

Listen to me for a nominal fee you can have anything you want
We'll remain here
We'll remain here forever and always
What matters the most is the backdrop ghost
circling your floating corpse at the end of the haunt
We'll remain here
We'll remain here forever (always)

Like a million other soldiers on a thousand other battlefields we wait
Wait for the dawn
Like a million other soldiers yes we wait

This is our Versailles
Palace on the swamp
This is our Versailles

6. Dunsel

And when the underworld's
Best kept secrets
Saw it's own reflection
I knew things had finally changed
For better or worse
Whatever as always

Midlife fires start to burn
They burn down our worn protection
I won't take pictures from their frame
Whatever as always

With their hands that sold me everything
Slapped a price tag on my chest

Bit my tongue and shut my mouth
Tried to blend in with the rest
But I'm a square peg
I'm a sore thumb

And it seems to me this apathy
Kills the life and honesty
It will deepen industry

All these songs sound so damn good
Even if their meaning's hollow
Hollow words dry out your mouth
And you might find it hard to swallow all this shit
That we keep feeding to keep ourselves and you believing
That no money can change us then a door opens up and some devil persuades us

The songs we sung when we were just young
Have all but lost their meaning
But there's still a few things
Still a few things
Still a few things
That we keep on believing
Still a few things
There's still a few things
That we keep on believing

Shitty music just ain't worth making
Smiles and thank-you's just ain't worth faking
Some assholes' hands ain't worth shaking
And if it's not broken we need to break it
There's no such thing as unconditional
No contracts bind you in the end
Make no mistake, this is a killing ground
Blood hungry and camouflaged as friend
Select yes
At the end of this mess
If you get there then it's your only fucking option left

These days I don't know
The people I'm supposed to trust
And I don't trust these people
That I'm supposed to know

The handlebars on my dreams they slowly start to rust
Helped take everything and somehow you still know
And as the cocaine cowboys finally get their wings
And sell them all for blow
These days I don't know these people that I'm supposed to trust
And I don't trust these motherfuckers that I'm supposed to know
These handlebars on all my dreams they slowly start to rust
The cocaine cowboys finally get their wings too
Now they sell them all for blow
I make music for myself, not for hand jobs from the upper-tier or their undeserved wealth
Here's to their failing fucking health

I don't mean this in a hateful way, but when the people you love start walking away
The world gets harder each and every day
Take your last bite before it crumbles away

There's something inside me I just have to say
Love nothing
Trust no one
Just live for the motherfucking day

7. The Reign Of Unending Terror

Each word bitten
Every fuck is pronounced
With conviction written
In justice announced
And every hand that feeds is bitten
If it steals from hungry mouths
Convention be damned
I know who I am and some words
Are just to fucking loud
They can’t be ignored

Twice our bitter lifetime
Tucked tightly in their belts
But spat and bit in such a way
That you just know how it felt
What it means to be a man
And what it means to refuse it
Things I learned along the way
While listening to their music
So laugh then cry so I’ll try but to laugh again

Throw your hands up in the relief
That twenty years won’t end their reign, their reign, their reign
The reign of unending terror
The rain that brings us warning
The rain that breaks the sky and gives us hope
For the end of this long night
Red sky morning light

The truth is some days I don’t have any morals at all
The truth is I left them in the men’s room at the truck-stop in the second stall
The truth is some days I don’t have any morals at all
The truth is I left them in the men’s room at the truck-stop in the second stall

And that’s the kind of enemy that obscures
The very core of me
My shallow lacking and disbelief
Steps back while flipping the sleeves of
Cd books with cold-cocked hooks
Flip the kings uplift the rooks
Spit on the diamond cuffs
Of the real crooks

When you look in my eyes who do you see
When you look in my eyes who is it
When you look in my eyes who do you see
When you look in my eyes who is it

8. Termites

Gin! always the gin, always take one on the chin
The devil dogs and scorpions peel away and wear my skin

Smokeless flame, the common name
Less than the angels but more of the same
No paradise, the grateful will lay their claim
Whether the intentions are violent or just mundane

With the wind he disappeared
Confirming everything that I feared
The time passed is shown by the length of his beard

Solomon stands, dead on his feet
waiting for termites to resolve his conceit
In the mountains, in the seas, in the air waits the disease
We are not gods, death comes to us all
but tonight I'm invincible; tomorrow I'll crawl.
In the mountains, in the seas, in the air waits the disease

The jinn in this bottle, just don't let him drown
Next lesson you swallow, might be hard to keep down
Taste the penalty of the blazing fire
Taste the penalty, sing with the Devil's choir

Gin! always the gin!
never thick and never thin
Thicker than blood, less than kin
The rattle trap night ends where it begins

9. Tongue-Splitter

Psychotherapist once claimed I had acute neurosis
Well, I only said a couple words and he made his diagnosis
He said I could say whatever I want because I never chose this
So I spat, grinned and I looked at him and blew him a Glasgow kiss, look out now

I close just one eye, and let a part of me die
Never too sure if it's the truth or a lie

I'm not asking for your pity "Oh woe is me" sarcastically
I'm not losing sleep pathetically while waxing so poetically

But I'm waning, waning alphabetically
As I keep dropping bombs
Dropping bombs
Dropping bombs apologetically

It was a wicked whimpering Winnipeg night
when my tongue grew wings and took to flight
the thought had never crossed my mind before that moment
is the truth so bent it can't be broken?

my jealousy got the best of me
and had a conference with the rest of me
it said, "If this is all that's left for me
then there's a little room for regret."
Little voice
Little voice
Little voice inside my head said,
"If you don't regret nothing then you might as well be dead, might as well be dead."

So I apologize,
mostly to the four or five guys
Who stand behind me on the stage every night

as the mic starts to whisper
and the words start to blister
in my mouth that I know aren't right

I gotta get back to who I was before my last ten years on autopilot
It's the mask that quite often starts to eat into your face
So wear it lightly like a cap that can quickly be replaced

I gotta get back to who I was before my last ten years on autopilot

So tell me again how my life should have been before I was spineless
before I gave in
because everybody thinks it's timeless... Well time's running out
One thing I'll never regret is I never shed my face

10. Sex Tapes

Here's lookin' at you, kid
It was gonna leak eventually, so eventually it did
And bad new, travels fast I think
In a moment the country will be stiff, stiff inside their pants

All the editors are hard, all the journalists are wet
All the boys are jerking off in private on the internet

The manager is sweating
The parents smoking cigarettes
And it doesn't matter if the vision flatters
It's the nudity, and that much is understood
(And that much is understood, that much is understood)
And it better be
It fucking better be
It better be good

'Cause she looks hungry on that tape
Yeah, she looks so fine in the limelight
In the sickly green she might have been
A girl I know, a place I've seen

Now all the editors are hard, and all the journalists are wet
And all the boys are jerking off in private on the internet
Now all the editors are hard, and all the journalists are wet
And all the boys are jerking off in private on the internet

Between the sweat and the silhouette
Between the drink and the regret
Have your fill, but don't forget...
Everyone's naked!

Somewhere out there in-ter-net
Somewhere out there in-ter-net

The Jonas generation's got rings wrapped 'round their dicks
The whole world waits with patience for one them boys to slip

Reflected, directed, by one simple fact
Be careful what you're looking at because it might be looking back
Reflected, directed, by one simple fact
Be careful what you're looking at because it might be looking back

In the sickly green she might have been
A girl I know, a place I've seen
In the sickly green she might have been
A fantasy that I foreseen

Yeah!
Get if off, get it off online
Get it off get if off get it off online

Innocently green she might have been
A girl I know or a place I've seen
A girl I know or a place I've seen







PROTEST THE HERO LYRICS