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| X - Los Angeles |
X - Los Angeles Lyrics and Youtube Music VideosAlbum:
Los Angeles Released:
1980 She had to leave...
Los AngelesAll her toys wore out in black and her boys had too
She started to hate every nigger and Jew
Every Mexican that gave her lotta shit
Every homosexual and the idle rich
She had to get out
She gets confused
Flying over the dateline her hands turn red
Cause the days change at night change in an instant the days
Change at night change in an instant
She had to leave
Los Angeles
She found it hard to say goodbye to her own best friend
She bought a clock on Hollywood blvd the day she left
It felt sad she had to get out
Writer/s: CHAPMAN, SEAN / DAVIS, ANDRE / JUAREZ, MOISES / MCEWAN, MATTHEW RYAN / SALMON, PATRICK
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by
LyricFindLos Angeles X was known for songs about the seedy side of Los Angeles, covering the shady characters and unsavory places instead of the glamourous side commonly portrayed in the media. This song is about a very racist person that feels compelled to leave the city for a less diverse environment. It's not about a real person, but a type of person X vocalist Exene Cervenka came across. Explaining how the song is not to be taken as an endorsement of this behavior, she told BAM in 1980: "'Los Angeles' is supposed to be this racist song. You wouldn't write, 'She hated every negro and other people too,' if you're being truthful about the character. You'd write, 'She hated every nigger and Jew,' because she didn't hate negroes she hated niggers. It's not a personal she. People don't understand. When you read a book, you don't think the narrator's the person who wrote the book. There's a separation." The lead singer of X, John Doe, wrote this with Cervenka and sang lead on the track with her. He appeared as Julianne Moore's husband in the movie Boogie Nights. Los Angeles was the first album X released, and it was on a small independent label called Slash. The album sold over 50,000 copies, which was excellent for a debut independent release, but the band was pretty much unknown outside of southern California. X put out one more album with Slash before signing with the major label Elektra for their third release, Under The Big Black Sun, which gave them a bigger marketing push and landed the album at #76 on the national charts. (Get much more on X in our interview with John Doe.) Careful if you're near a mosh pit when this song comes on - there was a lot of slam dancing going on when X would perform this in the Los Angeles punk clubs like The Masque. The song stayed in their set even after they became much more popular and graduated to venues that held thousands of people instead of hundreds.