Trouble..
Trouble me... disturb me with all your cares and your worries.
Trouble me... on the days when you feel spent.
Why let your shoulders bend underneath this burden
when my back is sturdy and strong?
Trouble me.

Speak to me... don't mislead me, the calm I feel means a storm is swelling.
Speak to me... there's no telling where it starts or how it ends.

[ Dennis Drew/Natalie Merchant ]

Don't talk, I will listen.
Don't talk, you keep your distance
for I'd rather hear some truth tonight than entertain your lies,
so take you poison silently.
Let me be. Let me close my eyes.

Don't talk, I'll believe it.
Don't talk, listen to me instead,
I know that if you think of it, both long enough and hard

[ Merchant ]

[ bassoons: Kim Laskowski & Atsuko Sato ]

It crawls on his back, won't ever let him be.
Stares at the walls until the cinder blocks can breathe.
His eyes have gone away, escaping over time.
He rules a crowded nation inside his mind.

He knows that night like his hand.
He knows every move he made.
Late shift, the bell that rang, a time card won't fade.

[ Buck/Drew/Gustafson/Augustyniak/Merchant ]

[ violin: Mary Ramsey ]

That summer fields grew high with foxglove stalks and ivy.
Wild apple blossoms everywhere.
Emerald green like none I have seen apart from dreams that escape me.
There was no girl as warm as you.

How I've learned to please, to doubt myself in need,
you'll never, you'll never know.

Take me now, baby, here as I am
Hold me close, and try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed

Come on now, try and understand
The way I feel under your command
Take my hand, as the sun descends
They can't hurt you now can't hurt you now, can't hurt you now

Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us

[ Merchant ]

[ cello: Larry Corbett/violin: Bruce Dukov/viola: Pamela Goldsmith/violin: Ralph Morrison (quartet arranged and conducted by Paul Buckmaster) ]

To think of my task is chilling.
To know I was carefully building the mask I was wearing for two years, swearing I'd tear it off.

[ Natalie Merchant ]

The color of the sky as far as I can see is coal grey.
Lift my head from the pillow and then fall again.
With a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather.
A quiver in my lips as if I might cry.

Well by the force of will my lungs are filled and so I breathe.
Lately it seems this big bed is where I never leave.

[ harmonica: Charles Fleischer ]

Follow the typical signs, the hand-painted lines, down prairie roads.
Pass the lone church spire.
Pass the talking wire from where to who knows?
There's no way to divide the beauty of the sky from the wild western plains.
Where a man could drift, in legendary myth, by roaming over spaces.
The land was free and the price was right.

That young boy without a name I'd know his face. In this city the kid's my favorite. I've seen him. I see him every day. Seen him run outside looking for a place to hide from his father, the kid half naked and said to myself "O, what's the matter here?" I'm tired of the excuses everybody uses, he's their kid I stay out of it, but who gave you the right to do this?

[ Robert Buck/Natalie Merchant ]

Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother
and the tears she cried, she cried for none other
than her little boy lost in our little world that hated
and that dared to drag him down. Her little boy courageous
who chose his words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts,
they all spoke through you.

[ Merchant ]

[ bassoons: Kim Laskowski & Atsuko Sato ]

It crawls on his back, won't ever let him be.
Stares at the walls until the cinder blocks can breathe.
His eyes have gone away, escaping over time.
He rules a crowded nation inside his mind.

He knows that night like his hand.
He knows every move he made.
Late shift, the bell that rang, a time card won't fade.

[ Drew/Merchant ]

[ alto sax: Maceo Parker/tenor sax: Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis/trombone: Fred Wesley (together: The JB Horns)/percussion: Paulinho Da Costa ]

If lust and hate is the candy,
if blood and love tastes so sweet,
then we give 'em what they want.
Hey, hey, give 'em what they want.

So their eyes are growing hazy 'cos they wanna turn it on,

O, baby blankets and baby shoes, baby slippers, baby spoons, walls of
baby blue. Dream child in my head is a nightmare born in a borrowed
bed.
Now I know lightning strikes again. It struck me once, then struck me
dead. My folly grows inside of me. I eat for two, walk for two,
breathe
for two now.
Well, the egg man fell down off his shelf. All the good king's men

[ Buck/Merchant ]

These are days you'll remember.

Never before and never since, I promise,

will the whole world be warm as this.

And as you feel it, you'll know

it's true that you are blessed and lucky.

It's true that you are touched by something

that will grow and bloom in you.

These are days you'll remember.

When May is rushing over you

You won a prize for that,
for telling lies like that
So well that I believed it.
And I never felt cheated.
You were the chosen one,
the pure eyes of Noah's dove.
Choir boys and angels
stole your lips and your halo.
In your reckless mind,
you act as if you've got more lives.
In your reckless eyes, you only have time and your love of danger
to it you're no stranger.