Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter lyrics - Elvis Costello and The Imposters

She says, "What is it that I've done

That you want me to be punished?"

When she woke up one day to find

That he had started to vanish

But if you overhear voices

Perhaps you should not be listenin' at all

Twitch the vigilant lace

Make a slow, sour face

Set the scandalized whispering

She's out on her own with the rest of her riches

As the kids paint him out of their refrigerator pictures

She picks up the bill, pays off the babysitter

'Cause everybody knows burnt sugar is so bitter

Once there was a time

Before he turned strange

She thought they would be together

For more than a lifetime

Look at him now

My, how things have changed

He could tear the sweet heart out of any girl

On just a whim

And turn it from a candy to a caramel

And make her hate the silly way she used to feel

And say, "I know nothing about him"

Now what's left of the birthday cake

Is very beautifully frosted

An absent father picks up the phone

To find the number's unlisted

But while the kids are distracted

They don't notice she's nervous at all

But how long will it take

Not to make a mistake

When a gentleman comes to call?

She's out on her own with the rest of her riches

As the kids tear down the refrigerator pictures

They already know how a woman may advance

From a pretty picture hat to a supermarket trance

But if he's unkind, he might as well forget her

'Cause everybody knows burnt sugar is so bitter

Burnt sugar is so bitter

Burnt sugar