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The Rolling Stones - Undercover Of The Night

The Rolling Stones - Undercover Of The Night Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Undercover
Released: 1983

Undercover Of The Night Lyrics

Hear the screams from Center 42
Loud enough to bust your brains out
The opposition's tongue is cut in two
Keep off the streets 'cause you're in danger

One hundred thousand disparos
Lost in the jails in South America
Curl up baby
Curl up tight
Curl up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover Of The Night

The sex police are out there on the streets
Make sure the past laws are not broken
The race militia has got itchy fingers
All the way from New York back to Africa

Curl up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Curl up baby
Sleep with all out of sight

Curl up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Undercover
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night

All the young men they've rounded up
Sent to camps back in the jungle
And people whisper, people double-talk
At once their fathers act so humble
All the young girls they have got the blues
They're heading on back to Center 42

Keep it undercover
Keep it out of sight
Keep it undercover
Keep it out of sight
Undercover
Keep it out of sight
Undercover
Keep it out of sight
Undercover of the night

Down in the bars, the girls are painted blue
Done up in lace, done up in rubber
The john's are jerky little G.I. Joe's
On R&R from Cuba and Russia
The smell of sex
The smell of suicide
All these things I just can't keep inside

Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night
Undercover
Undercover, undercover the night

Writer/s: JAGGER, MICK / RICHARDS, KEITH
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC, SONY ATV MUSIC PUB LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Undercover Of The Night Song Chart

This song is about political corruption in Central America. The US was supporting Nicaraguan rebels (Contras) amid great controversy. It's a rare political song by The Stones.

A lot of production went into the track. There is a great deal of echo and phasing on the drums and guitars.

Mick Jagger wrote almost all of this. He said of the song: "I'm not saying I nicked it, but this song was heavily influenced by William Burroughs' Cities Of The Red Night, a free-wheeling novel about political and sexual repression. It combines a number of different references to what was going down in Argentina and Chile. I think it's really good but it wasn't particularly successful at the time because songs that deal overtly with politics never are that successful, for some reason." (thanks, Bertrand - Paris, France)

Chuck Leavell, formerly of the Allman Brothers Band, played keyboards. He worked with The Stones throughout the '80s.

The video portrayed Mick Jagger as a rebel who is shot by Central American forces. This was a huge departure for the Rolling Stones, whose videos to that point consisted of performance footage with heavy preening by Jagger. It was directed by Julien Temple, who had done the Sex Pistols documentary The Great Rock And Roll Swindle. He revealed in I Want My MTV by Craig Marks: "I wrote the treatment for 'Undercover of the Night" as a way of not doing the video. I was a punk rocker, and the Stones were regarded as jet-set traitors to the cause. The song was about the death squads then operating in Central America, and I wrote an extreme treatment about being in the middle of an urban revolution, and dramatized the notion of Keith and Mick really not liking each other by having Keith kill Mick in the video. I never thought they would do it. Of course they loved it.

The video aired on MTV, but was turned down by some other outlets because of its violence.

This was the first single from Undercover.