The Steve Albini Lyrics Project


This is an on-going project to attempt to collate all of Steve Albini's lyrics in one place.

I need your help. Please send comments, corrections or suggestions to email or the forum for a discussion.


"I only write lyrics so that I have an excuse to scream into a microphone." - Steve Albini

"In my opinion the majority of song lyrics are useless and for imbeciles." - Dave Riley, 1996

"The lyrics are definitely not the focal point of the music. They’re the last thing we’re worried about." - Bob Weston, 1996

"If you’ve ever written a song that had words in it and then written the words down and looked at them on a piece of paper they just look fucking retarded. There’s just no reason to do that. The other thing is that I think that puts too much emphasis on the literal meaning of that version of the lyrics because the lyrics are quite fluid with us. The subject matter is generally pretty stable but the precise words that are sung aren’t. If I were somebody like Bob Dylan who wrote lyrics that were intended to be read in one specific way then maybe I wouldn’t be embarrassed about it." - Steve Albini, 1996


Some of the Big Black lyrics were based on Reid Fleming's, available on the Action Park site here
Anothers from Pasha Naini's "Big Black" site and Set Me On Fire
I have found very little information on Rapeman on the net, certainly no lyrics
Some of the Shellac lyrics were based on those at Claudio's page here



Sept 3 - corrected "Things to Do Today"
First uploaded 30 August 2003