New York I Love You - The Waterboys

Then she threw them with some seasoning in his face

Duke went rambling in his grief, like a vagabond or thief

Trying to find the love he sought some other place

He walked down the river highway in the melting summer sun

And shouted out above the cars and trucks

I wish I could become some kind of psychedelic bum

Or a happy traveling troubadour deluxe

New York — whatcha gonna do about it?

New York — climb up on the roof and shout it

New York — see there ain’t no doubt about it

Something in this town I just can’t live without

She lay across the bed, raven hair piled atop her head

Re-reading through the poem that she wrote

She had a feeling in her belly like her belly had been screwed

But luckily she knew the antidote

She stepped out on the street dressed in scarlet head to feet

Her hat the same precise shade as her lips

She tried to feel the way she had when love was young and gay and glad

She couldn’t… but still she swung her hips

New York — whatcha gonna do about it?

New York — climb up on the roof and shout it

New York — see there ain’t no doubt about it

Something in this town I just can’t live without

He phoned her up and said, honey, it was nothing but a number

And numbers can mislead you and confuse

To which she said, I’ve heard, like guns and cash and sex and words

If the user is a fool they get misused

He almost smashed the phone in rage but it held his database

So he lit himself a little joint instead

And told himself a lie about the who and when and why

And kids that’s how a man becomes a chowder-head

New York — whatcha gonna do about it?

New York — climb up on the roof and shout it

New York — see there ain’t no doubt about it

Something in this town I just can’t live without

She wrote a bitter novelette and stuck it on the internet

I believe you still can find it there for free

In the morning she would jog then post updates on her blog

And one day she upped and moved to Tennessee

The landlord rented her apartment to the NY Police Department

Who installed a cop named Franklin J.J.

Paul

Who was putting up a shelf, humming opera to himself

When he found her poems nestled in the wall

New York — whatcha gonna do about it?

New York — climb up on the roof and shout it

New York — see there ain’t no doubt about it

Something in this town I just can’t live without

Duke double-checked the deadlock of his Lower East Side store

And jumped into a car with yellow fins

He told himself «just tell it like is, man, just nail it on the line

And be honest with your tongue from here on in»

He was never satisfied with a comfortable ride

He had to be the crazy cosmonaut in flight

They found his body near a crumbling Hudson River pier

On a wild and stormy hot midsummer night

New York — whatcha gonna do about it?

New York — climb up on the roof and shout it

New York — see there ain’t no doubt about it

Something in this town I just can’t live without

Me I couldn’t sleep, I just lay there in a heap

The whole city was a swamp of heat and steam

At six AM came thunder and eventually I slumbered

Into a fanciful and curious kind of dream

I was drivin' Hank’s Cadillac as he rested in the back

On the final night of nineteen fifty-two

I offered him a smoke but Hank never woke

He was too far gone, and he was only passing through

I got up at ten to five, feeling almost seven-eighths alive

And was sitting in my favourite easy chair

When Duke’s immortal soul crowned with a golden aureole

Flew by my window on its way to who knows where

I took Tylenol for my head and then went out to get some bread

Like Lou I had twenty six bucks in my hand

By the Sixteen Handles shop I saw an overweight cop

Stuffing reams of paper in a garbage can

New York — whatcha gonna do about it?

New York — climb up on the roof and shout it

New York — see there ain’t no doubt about it

Something in this town I just can’t live without

New York, I love you

New York, New York

New York, New York

Meet me in New York, New York, baby

New York, New York

Even the shittiest old times are still great in New York, New York

New York, New York

New York, New York

New York, New York