Sleater-Kinney Album

Eye cream and thigh cream
how 'bout a get high cream?
Nothing do smoothes out the feelings
of being used
The Ballad of a Ladyman

Freak that I am
Live in Japan
Let's rock with the tough girls
in this part of the world
Take a photograph
Portrait of a Ladyman

Are we holding on to our pride a bit too long
Are we breaking you apart
Are we breaking on guitars

They say I've gone too far
with the image I've got and
they know I'd make a mint
with new plastic skin
and a hit on the radio!
Oh, tempations of a ladyman

I could be demure like
girls who are soft
Or boys who are fearful of
getting an earful
but I gotta rock!
I'd rather be a ladyman

how many times will you decide
how many lives will you define
how much control should we give up of our lives
(You sit at home with an alibi
in case they call and ask you
why all you do is go
"ooh ahh ohh"
you're out of control but saying

You went down in the very first round
sitting ringside in a tiny town
Knock out, knock out
First round, first round

This could be our very last stand
The Monitor and the Merrimac
too bad, too bad
You're ironclad, ironclad

When you call you will call the loudest
When you fall you will fall the hardest

Who do you love?
What would you kill
to make a heart stand still?
What would you pay
to make the hate go away?

Why battle-cry, dry your eyes
no one can hear you

You can't get to heaven in a silver spoon
You can polish everything
except for the mark on you

Come be the first in line
To shake the hand of mine
(They call you out and up)

All Hands on the Bad One
We would be no better

You can't get to heaven in your Sunday best
When the night before they were calling it
your cocktail dress

You can't get to heaven with a three chord song
They called you a sinner

Acid tooth
It's got nothing to do with you
but if you wanna watch me chew
My teeth are cutting you out

Stomachache
Well it must be in your head
It must be something that you did
Food just doesn't seem to work out

Am I rotting out?
Daddy says I got my mama's mouth
I'm all about
a forked tongue and a dirty house

Mom has said
Yes this happened to me long ago
But no one would believe me when I said:
Close my mouth
Was I born to accommodate
I'm so good at playing dead
words just don't seem to come out

Should I eat something sweet instead
Wash away all those things we said
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

You're no rock n' roll fun
like a party that's over
before it's begun
You're no walk in the park
more like a shot in the dark
with clues left for no one

And all the boys in the band
know how to get down
fill our Christmas socks
with whiskey drinks
and chocolate bars
And when the evening ends we won't
be thinking of you then
Although the best man
won't hang out with the girl band!

You're no rock n' roll fun
like a piece of art
that no one can touch
Your head is always up in the clouds
writing your songs
Won't you ever come down?

And all the boys in the band
know how to get down
fill our Christmas socks
with whiskey drinks
and chocolate bars
And when the evening ends we won't
be thinking of you then
Even if your song
is playing on the jukebox

You wanna party with the lights on
Come on I like it dark!
You always wanna hear the same old song
Come on play another song!

Bearer of the flag from the beginning
Now who would have believed this riot grrrl's a cynic
But they took our ideas to their marketing stars
and now I'm spending all my days at girlpower.com
Trying to buy back a little piece of me
(Everywhere you go they say "Hello,
weren't you the one that sold your soul?"
Every time you leave the say "Oh no,
why did you ever let us go?")

And I think that I sometimes might have wished
for something more than to be a size six
But now my inspiration rests
in-between my beauty magazines and my
credit card bills

I've been crawling up so long on your
stairway to heaven
And now I no longer believe that I wanna get in
And will there always be concerts where
women are raped
Watch me make up my mind instead
of my face
The number one must have is
that we are safe
(Everywhere you go teenage
is the rage
inside your pants
and on the front page
Everywhere you go it's die or be born
if you can't decide then
it's your own war)

No more

And for the ladies out there I wish
we could write more than the next
marketing bid
Culture is what we make it
Yes it is
Now is the time

There is a sound
they don't want you to own
Arrest every word
that escapes from your throat
They hand you the world's smallest microphone
It's still too loud and you're asked to go home

She can stay as long as she swears
that when she breathes it will be
her own air
She'll state her case and take up space
and that suffocates-
The professional

There is a sound that they want
you to hear
To drown out the voice
that plays in your ear
They hand you the world's biggest razor blade
an amateur bleeds
but she hardly gets paid

She can be mad but they'll let her know
the scorched earth
allows nothing to grow
and she'll be blamed but feel no shame
Cuz she'll have stopped-

The yard was cold and dark
the tracks were clearly marked
But she was tired/ she didn't see
She was just out alone
She wasn't going home
she was going somewhere far away

The train was moving through
as we know the world has to do
Everyone will say it was her fault
Somewhere a camera is placed
inside this awful place
The accident is about to start

Was it a lie?
Did it fill you head
Did it entertain?
Will you feel alive
at the end of it?

When the collision came
she died right away
her body flung almost sixty feet
and as she split in two
was she coming straight for you
and do you have a camera for a face?
was she your TV show
Was she your video

A woman's pain never private,
always seen
I want to close my eyes
I want to cut the wires
I want a day not made for you to see

When you play it back to me
it feels more like a parody
And that's all I will ever be
It's all I will ever be
I really don't care about it
I don't care if it's cold
I really want to be the prettiest wreck
you've seen
(You broadcast it in 50 states
looped her death on the internet
and a woman's life got cheaper that day

He's got a perfect face
Turn away before you go
and turn me on
I cannot look away
I'm stunned
it's that Je ne sais quoi
uh huh
He talks to me in my sleep
Does he write my songs for me?
Should I try to play just like him?
Kick it out, could you show me your riffs?

You always measure me by him
Don't get me wrong
I'm not opposed to something big

I'm so sick of tests
Go ahead and flunk my ass
You don't own the situation, honey
You don't own the stage
We're here to join the conversation
and we're here to raise the stakes
Now do you hear that sound
as the Model breaks
Take the stage

Let the image of him fade away
Go back and tear the pictures from the page
It's time for a new rock n' roll age
History will have to find a different face
and if you're ready for me

I wonder how you looked the day you were erased
To look down at your heart and watch it fade
Did you disappear or were you just misplaced
Left behind with no one else to blame

It's all gone but something lingers on
a place I used to call home
Now me, you, and the ghost
Looking for thing we lost
Laughing at the way it was,
Looking for the one we lost
(are you letting go?
Thinking clearer now that it's over
There's no one to blame
As we walk away
Why is it I just feel so heavy
What do I take away?)
When you're in a room
it's all that I can feel
Get so used to loving
what's not real
There's nothing I can hold,
No real tears to cry

14 Rue de Savoy
is where the flat was let
We shacked up in Paris two days
after we had met

Eighteen bars of the sonata
and you were mine
This music gig doesn't pay that good
but the fans are alright

Darling come home
I can't take the apartment alone
You left your beret behind
and your croissant is getting cold

Visa, Mastercard, discovered
that I was spent
Took my heart, my best jeans, and left me
with paying the rent
A user, abuser, a loser
but I didn't care
I've always been a guy with a sweet tooth
and that girl was just like a king-sized candy bar

Pick up the phone
Meet me at the Sorbonne
Keep turning me on
With those French words I can't pronounce

Milkshake n' honey yeah
Milkshake n' honey yeah

And then one fine morning
she woke, she knew
one long look at her life
It was you
(What you want you might never have
Wait for it until it forms a scar)

Come hell or high water
Her heart was made
No friend and no love
Will get in the way

For size long years happiness spoke
but then the time was up
the spell was broke
(Take your time, no hurry up
Change your mind, go back to the start)

She said that I have done
to get my way
What I have done
to get this day

You're gonna find out
You're gonna get low
It's time to darken your soul
Fortune weary love
Fortune weary love

The swimmer is so far from the distant shore
The only time she never feels alone
On the land her body distorts
In the water lines are true to her mind
I can hardly see you now
Are you getting closer and
Do you know you're the one?
They will never understand
How washed up you feel on the land
The sport light of the sun, it shines on

The Swimmer knows she'll never touch the floor
She can float unharmed by murky wars
And the land is as plain as her skin