You can shine your shoes and wear a suit
You can comb your hair and look quite cute
You can hide your face behind a smile
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled insideYou can wear a mask and paint your face
You can call yourself the human race
You can wear a collar and a tie
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled insideWell now you know that your
Cat has nine lives
Nine lives to itself
But you only got one
And a dog’s life ain’t fun
Momma take a look outsideYou can go to church and sing a hymn
You can judge me by the color of my skin
You can live a lie until you dieOne thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled insideWell now you know that your
Cat has nine lives
Nine lives to itself
But you only got one
And a dog’s life ain’t fun
Momma take a look outsideYou can go to church and sing a hymn
Judge me by the color of my skin
You can live a lie until you dieOne thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled insideOne thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled insideOne thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside
I always loved this song. It is off the second album, Imagine. It got poorer reviews than the first album, which got rave reviews. This first album was good, but I always thought Imagine was better. He really hit it out of the park with that one. God, Working Class Hero, Jealous Guy…wow! John Lennon is too much on that album. It’s as good as the late Beatles, as good as the White Album or Abbey Road. That voice, those lyrics, so much pathos and feeling. That album is almost painful to listen to – it’s months of the most intense psychotherapy jammed into 40 minutes. He packs it all in and lets it all hang out for all to see in a way that few modern musicians ever have.
This song is very good. If you want a life lesson from someone who lived it – yep, if you are seriously crippled inside – you can’t really hide it at all. No matter how hard you try, as long as your brain/mind/psyche/whatever is a serious mess, everyone’s going to figure it out and sooner than you think too. It won’t get past a soul, and once people get alone with you, it’s one of the first things they are going to remark on – you’re fucked in the head.
If you can pull out of it and put a pretty good shield on, you can fool most people though. Although I would argue that once that shield is on/up, you’re not all that screwed up anymore, because the purpose of the shield is to blind you to your own pain or problems and make it seem like they don’t exist. So if you blind yourself to your problems, are they still problems? Let’s call in the philosophers!