Tab Realm

Presidents Dead by Okkervil River






          Presidents Dead






D               A               Em
The President’s dead, the radio said
                   G          A
Dear friends is it not so horrible?
              Em                               G
A shock to my heart like a knife right through bread,
              A                      D
The newspaper said, the President’s dead.
D               A                       Em
The sea doesn’t dry and the sky doesn’t split,
                    G                     A
But friends it just seems so wrong, don’t it?
                 Em                      G
A shout from the crowd and a shot to the head,
                 A                   D
The President’s lying on the tarmac dead.
D               A                               Em
He’s lying face down with those black dress day gents,
                    G                    A
Guns drawn running around in the early o-bits,
                  Em                        G
Say he was a good man, you can’t argue with that,
              A                  D
Not today you can’t, not now you can’t.
D             A                             Em
In the media tent, where they spin and they slant,
                       G                          A
They just foam at the mouth and they chomp at the bit,
                       Em                              G
Those bloodsuckers can wait, ‘till those vultures cool it,
           A                    D
The radio said, the President’s dead,
D                     A                       Em
And let’s imagine the day, let’s say 30 years in,
                  G                        A
How somebody will say what were you doing when,
               Em                   G
On a beautiful day I was waking up and
               A               D
I was lying in bed with my girlfriend
D                    A                    Em
And the eggs on the plate and the bacon hissing
                    G                             A
And the coffee was great, these was spring on the wind,
                            Em                     G
If you ever lived through a day where the littlest things,
                A                            D
in the littlest ways, made you feel you were blest.
D                     A                            Em
And if you died right then, well you know you’d be missed,
                      G                A
But there’s no better way to cease to exist,
                      Em                     G
And you wouldn’t feel sad and you wouldn’t resist,
                          A                         D
Because you knew what you had and were thankful for it,
D                  A                           Em
In your own little way, well I’m a small quiet man,
                    G                        A
I’ve got no wars to win, I don’t have a big plan,
                  Em                       G
But I love my new place and I love my old friends,
                   A                          D
And I scrimp and I save and one day I’ll have kids,
D                A                        Em
I can truthfully say that my day was like that,
                G                           A
‘till the radio playing on the stand by the bed,
                Em                            G
fired out this report and in three words they said,
                       A                     D A Em G
Like three shots to my head, the President’s dead.
                 D A Em G
The President’s dead.
                 D A Em G
The President’s dead.
D A Em G
D A Em G







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