Song Lyrics

Borderline

by Joni Mitchell

Everybody looks so ill at ease
So distrustful so displeased
Running down the table
I see a borderline
Like a barbed wire fence
Strung tight strung tense
Prickling with pretense
A borderline

Why are you smirking at your friend?
Is this to be the night when
All well-wishing ends?
All credibility revoked?
Thin skin thick jokes!
Can we blame it on the smoke,
This borderline?

Every bristling shaft of pride
Church or nation
Team or tribe
Every notion we subscribe to
Is just a borderline
Good or bad we think we know
As if thinking makes things so!
All convictions grow along a borderline

Smug in your jaded expertise
You scathe the wonder world
And you praise barbarity
In this illusionary place
This scared hard-edged rat race
All liberty is laced with
Borderlines

Every income every age
Every fashion-plated rage
Every measure every gauge
Creates a borderline
Every stone thrown through glass
Every mean-streets-kick ass
Every swan caught on the grass
Will draw a borderline

You snipe so steady
You snub so snide
So ripe and ready
To diminish and deride!
You're so quick to condescend
My opinionated friend
All you deface all you defend
Is just a borderline
Just a borderline
Another borderline
Just a borderline

Transcriptions of Borderline

Guitar chords by Sue McNamara

Borderline has been recorded by 7 other artists

Grant, Mackenzie (from "Borderline" - 2022)
John Mailander's Forecast (from "Look Closer" - 2021)
Jones, Norah (from "Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration" - 2019)
Keenum, Tommy (from "Digital Single" - 2015)
Marianne Trudel / Karen Young (from "Portraits:Songs of Joni Mitchell" - 2018)
Owens Jr., Ulysses (from "Songs Of Freedom" - 2019)
Tatyana Balakirsky & Alex Nadjarov (from "Live at MuzEnergo-4" - 2008)
[more information on recordings by other artists]

Comments:

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ajay on 2021-Jul-14 at 05:18:06 GMT-5:

Listening to your live rendition of this song at the Troubadours of Folk Festival at UCLA in June 1993, this song hit me as if I walked into a glass wall. This is an old song, yet so reflective of how people are currently behaving. The conversations have become confrontational and divisive. it's pathetic that nothing evolved in human behavior over the decades.
Thank you for your profound body of musical work. It has inspired me.

danno on 2012-Apr-06 at 09:37:28 GMT-5:

this is one of those 'drink some wine and sing along to as loud as you can' songs.
(it speaks of our politics today so clearly)
You snipe so steady
You snub so snide
So ripe and ready
To diminish and deride!
it is so easy to pass judgement and not really look at something without words, to not name.

This song appears on:

View album Turbulent Indigo Released October 25, 1994
View album Travelogue Released November 19, 2002
View album Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced Released November 24, 2014