Your Cover’s Blown

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To parse NME’s cheeky comparison from 2004: There’s a bit of bohemian in Your Cover’s Blown, but not much rhapsody. Cover is more a slinky spy theme for breaking free… Read More

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Your Cover’s Blown Lyrics

So how do we know each other
And how do you have my number?
Well why don't you guide me
You be the driver?

Say what you want and leave your shyness home
And you should do what you want and write a little poem
Leave it for her and live another day
And you should leave it for her, the girl around the way

Write down a list of things you want to do
And then you leave it in work because you want to live a little
Pick up the girl in someone's borrowed Mini
Take her to dinner, use her boyfriend's money

Hey lady, put the phone down
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends to cool it
Your cover's blown
I want to see you alone
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends to cool it
Your cover's blown

Planning a break is such a tricky thing
Because you move to the country, she comes back again
And then you move to the city, but she goes abroad
Is she telling you something? Is she getting bored?
I'll make a rough plan to sleep around, I'm in a rut
I need a change, I'm a lazy rat, if I am honest
But my bold change of tact will fade out with the summer
I've got no appetite and all the girls are bummers

My baby doesn't look at me
The way I want her to look
She doesn't comprehend
My baby's got it going on
She's got a friend hid in every street in this town
I want to go out, but there's nobody home
I'll go on my own

Thus starts the lonely walking
There's always too much talking
I should have stayed home
She starts her cool caressing
The kid, she starts undressing
I should've stayed home
The DJ's picking up speed
That's something I just don't need
I should've stayed home
The gossip's bearing down on me
The kids are pairing off in front of me
I should've stayed home
I should've stayed home
I think I'll go home

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Listen lady, put your phone down
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends to cool it
Your cover's blown
I need to see you alone
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends to cool it

Listen lady, leave your phone down
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends to cool it
Your cover's blown
I need to see you alone
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends to cool it

Hey lady, meet my mum and dad
You're a strange apparition
In this land of potted plants and box-like houses
Where the girls like mouses breathe a long sigh of resignation
You resign yourself to keep on growing
Like the seeds you're sowing
You're a strange aberration
In this land of grammar schools and gala days
The ladies set in their ways
You had a long conversation
With the kid next door
He's a little slow
But in your favour, it shows
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends to move out to the sticks

Listen lady, leave the boy home
Cancel all operations
Tell your friends there's more to you than this

About

To parse NME’s cheeky comparison from 2004:

There’s a bit of bohemian in Your Cover’s Blown, but not much rhapsody.

Cover is more a slinky spy theme for breaking free from scenester security, and Stuart Murdoch plays the puppetmaster with puckish understatement.

But this doesn’t mean that Cover– still the funkiest and longest song Belle and Sebastian have created– doesn’t create its own form of dramatic tension. The quickly alternating currents of chippy disco rhythms and Bolero-style guitar make Murdoch’s anxiously told tale of surreptitiously splitting the city for the sticks into a quietly garish operetta.