Lyrics for Beyond Belief as interpreted by Mopnugget

Beyond Belief Lyrics
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies the same defeats
Keep your finger on important issues
With crocodile tears and a pocketful of tissues
I'm just the oily slick
On the windup world of the nervous tick
In a very fashionable hovel

I hang around dying to be tortured
You'll never be alone in the bone orchard
This battle with the bottle is nothing so novel

So in this almost empty gin palace
Through a two-way looking glass
You see your Alice

You know she has no sense
For all your jealousy
In a sense she still smiles very sweetly

Charged with insults and flattery
Her body moves with malice
Do you have to be so cruel to be callous

And now you find you fit this identikit completely
You say you have no secrets
And then leave discreetly

I might make it California's fault
Be locked in Geneva's deepest vault
Just like the canals of Mars and the great barrier reef
I come to you beyond belief

My hands were clammy and cunning
She's been suitably stunning
But I know there's not a hope in Hades
All the laddies cat call and wolf whistle
So-called gentlemen and ladies
Dog fight like rose and thistle

I've got a feeling
I'm going to get a lot of grief
Once this seemed so appealing
Now I am beyond belief

(Repeat chorus)

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Candesvara
10-05-2002

Rated 0 
This is stone-cold genius. Tom Waits and Bob Dylan are great, and I know people already give Elvis a lot of credit, but he deserves it a lot more than Dylan. Dylan writes great narratives but often things become repetetive or meandering, and the musical edge pales in comparison with Costello. Long live the king.

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chaordic
04-08-2004

Rated 0 
The average songwriter, when referring to a bar, will say 'bar', or 'pub.' Elvis says 'gin palace.' Damn. This song's got all the clever wordplay that was in Get Happy!! but without the preciousness.

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Zelch58
10-22-2004

Rated 0 
gin palace is nice... but did you overlook the "bone orchard"? EC stands alone in his brilliance.

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Cortez_08
03-27-2006

Rated 0 
Bone Orchard refers to a graveyard, correct??

I don't know about this song though, I don't think it has a direct meaning, but is just more about his thoughts on life........I really have no idea about the song as a whole though

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Zubby
06-17-2006

Rated 0 
What a wonderful lyric.
It seems to me to be about hanging around in a bar, trying to pick anything up, knowing disappointment is in store no mater what how the evening ends up.
Cheery, isn't it?

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hangwire13
08-04-2006

Rated 0 
what he said, Candesvara--stone cold genius. One of my favorite EC songs.

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paul_f
08-09-2006

Rated 0 
A gin palace is a particular kind of ornate Victorian pub of which some still survive. There are a few great examples in Liverpool where EC spent a couple of teenage years. Bone orchard is a common term for a cemetery in Liverpool (and elsewhere I believe).

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dobryden
07-02-2007

Rated 0 
What I really like: "Just like the canals of Mars and the Great Barrier Reef/I come to you beyond belief."
What a brilliant association. Galileo was the first person to view Mars through a telescope, and Darwin explored the Great Barrier Reef. Those two jarred the belief structures of their times with their scientific explorations. They went 'beyond belief' in a sense. Elvis is singing here about being beyond believing in romantic love (in the ways people pursue it anyway), but in those lines he's associating it with 'belief' in another sense in an intriguing, subtle and powerful way. It doesn't get better than this in pop music -- the way he makes his suggestion in those two lines is worthy of T.S. Eliot.

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lunaburning
11-08-2007

Rated 0 
Just brilliant. But I've always heard the line as: " I'm just an oil slick in a wind-up world with a nervous tic."

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likethecanals
12-05-2007

Rated 0 
This is my favorite song of all time. I'm thinking along the same lines as dobryden- on the one level, he's saying that he's beyond believing that he will find love. I also think that through his allusions to Galileo and Darwin he wants to discover that person who will destroy all notions he has about love, as their discoveries shook up their worlds. Reflected in the mirror, he sees himself in the past and becomes nostalgic for that time before he became so jaded.

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foreverdrone
06-17-2008

Rated 0 
hey dobryden, cool...i mean, i picked up on the images--in the chorus--being of things which provoke disbelief or awe...but to find such a precise connection! i'm sure it was entirely intentional.

in the liner notes elvis says something like: the two key songs are titled "beyond belief" and "man out of time", so do I really need to explain further? on the personal level, the first title indicates costello was at a point in his life where he could no longer believe in anything (himself most of all, I'd guess)

if you're "charged" with insults and flattery, does that carry a heavier sentence than assault and battery? unless you're innocent, in which case it might not matter. innocence, in a sense...

if you live in a fashionable place, how can it be a hovel? well, if
you have nervous tics, which a battle with the bottle might worsen rather than relax--and torture and death are on your mind; the cemetery seems not so far away--your hands are clammy, and you're nothing more than a smear skittering across the ocean: doesn't all this suggest the place you live is dilapidated, soon to (in at least one sense) fall apart?

the place you live: it's one answer to the question: "where are you?" which is a question threatening to put on the table all kinds of "issues" you might prefer to "clam" up about. where are you? your body. and it's not so appealing...in fact, it's a mess. you look like hell (hades)

your hovel is about to be condemned. in a sense, it's already been thoroughly condemned...in merely two minutes and 34 seconds.

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poolhallace
08-26-2008

Rated 0 
I've enjoyed the lyrics to this song for years, even though I misheard some critical lyrics. I, too, thought the line was: " I'm just an oil slick in a wind-up world with a nervous tic." Also, I always thought this song was about a jaded, sleazy pickup artist. First stanza talks about his pickup routine, sometimes successful, sometimes not ("History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats'). Part of his arsenal was to feign interest in causes to get the attention of his target ("crocodile tears," etc)

When he writes "Charged with insults...," my take is that he has aroused the interest of his "Alice" with a banter that mixes flattery and mild deprecation.

He then is disgusted with himself for being the consummate empty pickup artist, and thus "beyond belief" ("And now you find you fit this identikit completely").

Most of the rest of the song is a gauzy look at his post pickup encounter with "Alice." California's fault, Geneva's vault, Mars' canals = metaphors for female anatomy. Then the lyrics fan out more generally into romance and the battle of the sexes.

My take anyway. Could be totally off.

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woodenfloor
09-24-2009

Rated 0 
I particularly like "do you have to be so cruel to be callous?" brilliant line about someone over-doing their insults.

also good is "dogfight like rose and thistle." great reference to the history of bloodshed between the english and scottish.


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