Elvis Costello & The Attractions - National Ransom Lyrics

Running pell-mell and harum-scarum
Running as hot as they do or dare
Stick out your tongue
And drink down all the venom
A cut-throat Cuthbert
And Millicent St. Cyr
From the real old Macau
To the new false Americas
In the liberated territories
Unusual suspects shake down, shake down, shake down
Various dubious characters

Mother's in the kitchen picking bones for breakfast
Boiling them down by the bushel and the score
Pull out your thumb and count what's left on your fist
There's a wolf at the window with ravening maw

Did you find how to lie?
Did you find out how to cheat?
The elite bleat, their obsolete
But are your prospects?
Exact, perfect object
Now, if you'd only genuflect

They're running wild
Just like some childish tantrum
Meanwhile we're working every day
Paying off the national ransom

Woe betide all this hocus-pocus
They're running us ragged at their first attempt
Around the time the killing stopped on Wall St.
You couldn't hold me, baby with anything but contempt

Letters peel slowly from our speech
The claxton attempts to preach
Stretching for stars still out of reach
Drowning
Flailing
Outside, someone's wailing

They're running wild
Just like some childish tantrum
Meanwhile we're working every day
Paying off the national ransom

They're running wild
Just like some childish tantrum
Meanwhile we're working every day
Paying off the national ransom