///*****/// [Intro] (Drums count in, crowd screaming) One! Two! One-two-three-four! [Verse 1] I was nothing but a shadow on a factory floor Punching numbers, watching clocks, and wanting more Then a radio caught fire in a beat-up Chevrolet And a stranger with a Stratocaster showed me the way Now I'm standing on a mountain made of speaker cones Looking out at every face and none of them alone There's a girl up on her brother's back, she's screaming out my name And she don't know it yet, but we're exactly the same [Pre-Chorus] So give me everything you've got tonight Give me every ounce of that fight [Chorus] Twenty thousand voices, one enormous heart Twenty thousand strangers who were falling apart Now we're screaming it together till the ceiling comes apart Twenty thousand voices, singing in the dark! [Verse 2] I have played to seven people in a bar outside of Leeds I have slept beneath a drum kit and I've bled for what I need And I never asked for statues or a name upon a wall Just a hall of open throats and one great song to call Now the barricade is bending like a wave against the shore And security stopped counting somewhere back in eighty-four When they ask me what religion, I just point out at the light Twenty thousand true believers and a Saturday night [Pre-Chorus] So give me everything you've got tonight Give me every ounce of that fight [Chorus] Twenty thousand voices, one enormous heart Twenty thousand strangers who were falling apart Now we're screaming it together till the ceiling comes apart Twenty thousand voices, singing in the dark! [Guitar Solo] (Melodic, singing legato, harmonised twin leads into a frantic climb) [Crowd Call and Response] Sing! (Sing!) Louder! (Louder!) I can't hear you! (Whoa-oh-oh-oh!) That's my people! [Bridge] When I'm old and I'm forgotten and the amps have all gone cold This is the only story that I'll ever want told Not the money, not the mirrors, not the miles I ever drove Just the night the whole arena caught the fire that I threw [Final Chorus] Twenty thousand voices, one enormous heart Twenty thousand strangers who were falling apart Now we're screaming it together till the ceiling comes apart Twenty thousand voices, singing in the dark! Whoa-oh! Whoa-oh-oh! Singing in the dark! [Verse 3] There's a language in this building that we never had to teach Four bars and a chorus and it's everybody's speech I have seen it in Curitiba, I have seen it in Madrid Same open mouths, same open hands, the same wild grinning kids I have seen it in a rain storm and I've seen it in the snow And whoever tries to tell you that a song is just a song Has never stood in this exact spot and heard twenty thousand voices strong [Outro] (Crowd carries the melody alone for eight bars) Whoa-oh-oh-oh... Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
