Destiny's Child Songs - Bills, Bills, Bills Lyrics

Destiny's Child - Bills, Bills, Bills

Destiny's Child - Bills, Bills, Bills Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The Writing's On The Wall
Released: 1999

Bills, Bills, Bills Lyrics

At first we started out real cool
Taking me places I ain't never been
But now, you're getting comfortable
Ain't doing those things you did no more
You're slowly making me pay for
Things your money should be handling
And now you ask to use my car
Drive it all day and don't fill up the tank
And you have the audacity to even come and step to me
Ask to hold some money from me until
You get your check next week

You trifling
(Good for nothing type of brother)
Silly me
(Why haven't I found another)
(A baller), when times get hard need someone to help me out
(Instead of) a scrub like you who don't know what a man's about

Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through
Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through

Now you've been maxing out my cards
Giving me bad credit buying me gifts with my
Own ends
Haven't paid the first bill
But you're steady heading to the mall
Going on shopping sprees perpetrating to your friends that you be balling
And then you use my cell phone
Calling whoever that you think at home
And then when the bill comes all of a sudden you be acting dumb
Don't know where none of these calls come from
When your mama's number's here more than once

You trifling
(Good for nothing type of brother)
Silly me
(Why haven't I found another)
(A baller), when times get hard need someone to help me out
(Instead of) a scrub like you who don't know what a man's about

Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through
Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through

(You trifling, good for nothing type of brother)
(Oh silly me, why haven't I found another)
(You trifling, good for nothing type of brother)
(Oh silly me, why haven't I found another)
(You trifling, good for nothing type of brother)
(Oh silly me, why haven't I found another)
(You trifling, good for nothing type of brother)
(Oh silly me, why haven't I found another)

Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through
Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through

Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through
Can you pay my bills
Can you pay my telephone bills
Can you pay my automo-bills
If you did then maybe we could chill
I don't think you do
So, you and me are through

Writer/s: ROWLAND, KELENDRIA / BURRUSS, KANDI / BRIGGS, KEVIN / KNOWLES, BEYONCE / LUCKETT, LETOYA
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Bills, Bills, Bills Song Chart

This song is about a man who gradually becomes more dependent on his girlfriend for money; he runs up bills and then asks his girl to pay them. Kandi Burruss and Kevin "She'kspare" Briggs, who had already written the song "Bug A Boo" for the group and had worked with TLC on "No Scrubs," came up with "Bills" on their second trip to Houston to write songs for Destiny's Child. Briggs got the idea for the "can you pay my bills?" hook when they were in a grocery store. According to Burruss, she came up with the melody, and made sure the song wasn't about desperate girls looking for a guy to pay their way, but ladies who thought they deserved better than a man who never picked up the tab. Burruss based many of the lyrics on a true story: a guy she dated would drive around her car and use her cell phone while she put gas in it.

When Burruss and Briggs went back to the studio, they had a writing session and worked on the song with group members Beyoncé Knowles and LeToya Luckett, who got writing credits on the song for contributing lyrics (this is something Beyoncé would often do: work with experienced writers and grab a lucrative writing credit on her songs). By the end of the session, they figured out that the reason they were asking a guy to pay their bills was because the guy was running them up, a distinction lost on listeners who heard only the chorus and figured the girls were looking for a sugar daddy.

This was the first single released from Destiny's Child's second album The Writing's On The Wall, and it became their first #1 hit. Beyoncé was just 17 when they recorded it, and was still using her last name. There were four girls in the band, and the song's co-writer, Kandi Burruss, was about 10 years away from becoming a Real Housewife of Atlanta. Burruss did have girl group experience - she was a member of Xscape, who had a hits with "Just Kickin' It" and "The Arms of the One Who Loves You."

This was the second hit for Destiny's Child with a title made up the same word repeated three times. Their first hit was "No No No."

A dancer in the video, Farrah Franklin, joined the group after Letavia Robertson and LeToya Luckett quit in 2000. Franklin was fired a few months later after she did not show up for an MTV appearance.

This is certainly not the first song to find a woman complaining about her man's lack of financial prowess, but it is one of the more audacious takes on the matter, and the only song we've found in the genre to top the Hot 100. One of the first songs of the Rock Era to explore the topic was sung from a man's perspective: "Money (That's What I Want)," a 1959 Motown classic for Barrett Strong. One of the more enterprising lyrics in that one - "Your love gives me such a thrill, but your love can't pay my bills" - was written by a female writer at Motown named Janie Bradford.