Sunrise lyrics

As per the discussion in the Doubts Even Here thread, it's true that the end section of Sunrise has some pretty hard to decipher lyrics, so here's my starter

As we spend our days together Nothing can go wrong No one told the truth about it Because it was so strong If you ever think of me If you hear my name If you read between the lines You'll hang your head in shame These old wounds will never heal The ice will never freeze Whatever I have done for you I do need to believe

Feel free to agree/disagree!

Last line is maybe 'I did in sympathy' or possibly 'I did the same for me'?

Around the same time as I did the Doubts Even Here lyrics, I had a go at these.

My version is similar to yours:

As we spend our days together, nothing can go wrong No one told the truth about it because they (*) were so strong If you ever think of me, if you hear my name If you read between the lines, you'll hang your head in shame These wounds (*) will never heal, the ice will never freeze Whatever I have done for you I did in sympathy (*)

* Denotes variations from you.

I have to be honest, I hadn't been able to pick up the 'wounds' lyric previously and had labelled it (unconvincingly) as 'These ears will never hear'. But listening to it now, it sounds like it could be 'wounds'. I'm not sure of the 'old' preceding it, but it sounds like another word 'could' be there.

perspexorange wrote:

As we spend our days together, nothing can go wrong No one told the truth about it because they (*) were so strong If you ever think of me, if you hear my name If you read between the lines, you'll hang your head in shame These wounds (*) will never heal, the ice will never freeze Whatever I have done for you I did in sympathy (*)

Agreed.

i Could never make out this section but the last lyric seems to me to be:

Whatever I have done for you I did it in sympathy

Good work everyone on that last line - I think you're right that's it's "I did in sympathy" and the other minor changes do make more sense in context

I was listening to Low Life in the car today, and when Sunrise came on it reminded me of this thread. I dug the CD out this evening and ripped the track as a WAV, then cut out the last verse and did some EQing in a sample editor to isolate Bernard's vocals (not so easy, as the guitar and synth occupy the same frequency space). I also scouted around youtube for the various live versions, which are usually truncated (he leaves out the two lines before the last one, and has a slightly different version of the last line).

The version I've come up with from all of this is: As we spent our days together, nothing could go wrongNo one told the truth about it because it was so strongIf you ever think of me, if you hear my nameIf you read between the lines, you'll hang your head in shameThese old wounds will never heal, the ice will never freezeWhatever I have done for you I did in sympathy (Live he usually replaces the last 3 lines with 'Whatever I have done for you I'd do it all again')

The main difference to the ones posted above is the tense of first line - it's a breakup song, talking about a relationship in the past tense, and the first line continues that (as do the following lines).

The Rotterdam 1985 live performance is probably the clearest live version,

Based on a few different versions on Youtube, in his tribute act version Hook has a few variations (possibly because he doesn't know what the real lyrics are and can't remember his version while performing - on at least one video he keeps looking down to one side between each line, presumably at an autocue) As we spent our days together, nothing could go wrongNo one told the truth about it because it was so strongIf you ever think of me and if you hear/call/say* my nameIf you ever realise, don't hang your head in shame/Please don't read between the lines, just hang your head in shame*My eyes will never see you cry, the lies will never cease/These ears will never hear the lies, the lies that never cease*Whatever I have done for you I did with dignity/sympathy* (* - delete as appropriate)

Prime586 wrote: I was listening to Low Life in the car today, and when Sunrise came on it reminded me of this thread. I dug the CD out this evening and ripped the track as a WAV, then cut out the last verse and did some EQing in a sample editor to isolate Bernard's vocals (not so easy, as the guitar and synth occupy the same frequency space). I also scouted around youtube for the various live versions, which are usually truncated (he leaves out the two lines before the last one, and has a slightly different version of the last line).

The version I've come up with from all of this is: As we spent our days together, nothing could go wrongNo one told the truth about it because it was so strongIf you ever think of me, if you hear my nameIf you read between the lines, you'll hang your head in shameThese old wounds will never heal, the ice will never freezeWhatever I have done for you I did in sympathy (Live he usually replaces the last 3 lines with 'Whatever I have done for you I'd do it all again')

The main difference to the ones posted above is the tense of first line - it's a breakup song, talking about a relationship in the past tense, and the first line continues that (as do the following lines).

The Rotterdam 1985 live performance is probably the clearest live version

Welcome to the thread. Yep - I think you're right on most of this.

Weirdly, I always used to think that it was 'nothing could go wrong', but have, in recent years, gone with 'nothing can go wrong', based on the use of the word 'spend'. But, listening back now, I'm pretty sure it's 'could', so it makes sense it's 'spent'.

To my ears, line 2 is 'No one told the truth about it because they were so strong', but I could easily be wrong.

In respect of line 5, this is the most problematic, I think. I'm now pretty sure it is 'wounds' but I really can't hear 'old'.

I've been having a chat with a fellow fan over on the JoyDiv.org boards about this and he has suggested 'Bitter wounds' rather than 'These old wounds' and this seems more likely to me. I can certainly hear a 'tt' sound and it's the same number of syllables.

Here's a little video that the above person has uploaded with some the sounds made clearer / being stripped out.

There are two versions on this clip. As he says "The first preserves more of the consonant sounds but includes more of the music, it's a bit clearer than the album. The second (starting at 0.41) is a lot clearer but strips out some of the consonant sounds too, so it's not ideal."

Like you, Prime586, I've listened to a load of gigs and agree that he does miss out lines 4 and 5 quite often. I've never heard a gig where he replicates the Low Life version, even during gigs played at the time of the LP release. This makes me think that it was probably improvised at the time of recording, rather than planned lyrics.