[Verse 1]
Feeling obsolete in the twenty-first century
Oh, how I should have listened to mother
And pain unravels a thread that was sewn
From your belly-bu*ton when you were only four-years old, or so I've been told
[Verse 2]
My sister called from the site of her second baptism
Hands covered in mace and lungs caked with tear-gas
She said, "James! The police will soon have us on our knees
But the good lord is watching over you and me, and our dying city."
[Chorus 1]
And all the boys, all the girls, all the boys, all the Oyster Boys
How I wish that I knew what I've been through
[Verse 3]
I'm nobody's angel or darling or messiah
My therapist says nobody waits forever
But the next few weeks could change everything
We're living in perpetual history, do you agree?
[Verse 4]
There're not many things both pure and ethical
The Paris Metro still smells like piss
But for all of life's fleeting and fragile indeterminacies
Something more animal still flows underneath, something terrible
[Chorus 2]
And all the girls, all the boys, all the girls, all the Oyster Boys
How I wish that they knew what I've been through
And kissing you, kissing me; ambiguity
Oh how I wish that you knew what I've been through