Elbow Songs - My Sad Captains Lyrics

Elbow - My Sad Captains

Elbow - My Sad Captains Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The Take Off and Landing of Everything
Released: 2014

My Sad Captains Lyrics

I'm running out of miracles
Oh my soul
And the streets are lined with one-man shows
Oh my soul
Corner boys were moved along
Oh my soul
We're plummeting like crippled crows
Oh my soul

Oh, long before
You and I were born
Others beat these benches with their empty cups
To the night and its stars
To be here, and now, and who we are

Another sunrise with My Sad Captains
With who I choose to lose my mind
And if it's all we only pass this way but once
What a perfect waste of time

The BMX apothecary
Oh my soul
The architect of infamy
Oh my soul
For each and every train we miss
Oh my soul
A bitter little Eucharist
Oh my soul

Oh, long before
You and I were born
Others beat these benches with their empty cups
To the night and its stars
To be here, and now, and who we are

Another sunrise with my sad captains
With who I choose to lose my mind
And if it's all we only come this way but once
What a perfect waste of time

Another sunrise with my sad captains
With who I choose to lose my mind
And if it's all we only pass this way but once
What a perfect waste of time

Another sunrise with my sad captains
With who I choose to lose my mind
And if it's all we only pass this way but once
What a perfect waste of time

What a perfect waste of time

Writer/s: GARVEY, GUY EDWARD JOHN / POTTER, CRAIG LEE / POTTER, MARK / TURNER, PETER JAMES / JUPP, RICHARD BARRY
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

My Sad Captains

The theme of aging is detailed in this song. Guy Garvey explained to NME: "It mourns the fact you can't see all your friends every night like you can when you're young."

The lyric: "Another sunrise with my sad captains, with you I choose to lose my mind" comes from a line in Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra. It's adapted from when Mark Antony speaks about his drinking partners: "Come, let's have one other gaudy night; call to me all my sad captains; fill our bowls; once more, let's mock the midnight bell."

Garvey told Uncut magazine: "There's a line in it - 'we only come this way but once' - which is actually a bastardisation of William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania). He was talking about realising you only have one life, realising your own mortality."

The song finds Garvey recounting how drinking sessions change as the drinkers become older. "My Sad Captains is mourning the end of the 15-strong three-day bender in favour of one or two people's company and getting proper into your cups," he explained to The Observer. "Maybe having your mind changed by something somebody says. That's my favourite kind of socialising now. But I still think wistfully about those crazy, hedonistic 15 years that I had."

Garvey had the opening lines to this song, "I'm running out of miracles," but it was his former girlfriend, novelist and journalist Emma Jane Unsworth, who gave him the chorus.