Beck Songs - Paper Tiger Lyrics

Beck - Paper Tiger

Beck - Paper Tiger Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Sea Change
Released: 2002

Paper Tiger Lyrics

Just like a paper tiger
Torn apart by idle hands
Through the helter skelter morning
Fix yourself while you still can
No more ashes to ashes
No more cinders from the sky
All the laws of creation
Tell a dead man how to die

O deserts down below us
And storms up above
Like a stray dog gone defective
Like a paper tiger in the sun

Looking through a broken diamond
To make the past what it should be
Through the ruins and the weather
Capsized boats in the sea

O deserts down below us
And storms up above
Like a stray dog gone defective
Like a paper tiger in the sun

We're just holding on to nothing
To see how long nothing lasts

O deserts down below us
And storms up above
Like a stray dog gone defective
Like a paper tiger in the sun

Writer/s: Beck Hansen
Publisher: Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Paper Tiger

Beck's father, orchestrator David Campbell, helped with the brass and string arrangements on this song and the rest of the album. Beck told NPR how they worked together. "I usually get some kind of keyboard and I'll play the basic voicings and we'll map it out," he said. "With strings, a lot of times I'll play or sing parts over the song, which we'll transcribe."

He added: "For 'Paper Tiger' there's a whole solo that the orchestra does; that was actually something I sang, and then we just transcribed it."

A paper tiger is a person or thing that seems strong or threatening, but is, in fact, feeble or ineffective. The expression arose from a Chinese saying applied by Chairman Mao in the 1950s to the USA. Beck sings of the paper tiger protagonist in this song as being, "torn apart by idle hands."

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