Court Yard Hounds are an adult alternative and AAA music duo, currently com… Read Full Bio ↴Court Yard Hounds are an adult alternative and AAA music duo, currently comprised of Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, with Robison on lead vocals. The members are sisters and are also founding members of Dixie Chicks. Dixie Chicks are currently on hiatus. They are signed to Columbia Records and released their self-titled debut album in May 2010.
Bio:
Strictly speaking, it’s only a few feet from stage left or stage right to the center spotlight. But it took Martie Maguire and Emily Robison a couple of decades to move those couple of yards. As the mainstays of the Dixie Chicks since they formed the group in 1989, the sisters have been familiar faces to many millions of fans, yet just a little mysterious in that familiarity, content as they were to cede the lead vocalist position and remain music’s most recognizable “sidewomen.” Chicks fans couldn’t help but hear those ever-present harmonies and wonder if Emily and Martie might ever come out from hiding in plain sight.
That’s just what they’ve done in their newly hatched incarnation as Court Yard Hounds, with a gorgeously assured debut album that has the siblings sounding like they’ve been fearless frontwomen all their lives. Is this band a side project? They can live with that label. Or something permanent? Yes, that, too.
Robison and Maguire could no sooner take an indefinite vacation from music than they could from being related. So as the mother band’s hiatus grew into a longer vacation than anyone originally anticipated, “dormant” began to equal “torment” for these two working musicians. The Dixie Chicks were last seen triumphing at the Grammys in early 2007, winning the exceedingly rare trifecta of album, record, and song of the year for Taking the Long Way and its flagship single “Not Ready to Make Nice.” Something else they weren’t ready to do was make records or tour again, at least for a long while, as it turned out. All three Chicks enjoyed family time away from the media glare—but after a while Maguire and Robison felt refreshed and rarin’ to go, which still left them one singer short of a quorum. The usually bold Maines’ reticence to put herself through the grind again had the effect of pushing her slightly shyer bandmates out of the nest.
“When Natalie first wanted to take a break,” says Maguire, “I remember this real fear in me, like: When are we getting back on the road? This is what I know! What will I do? I don’t have a college degree!” she recalls, laughing. Happily, rather than take night classes, they decided to school themselves in how to launch a new band. The Chicks haven’t disbanded, but Court Yard Hounds is no mere time-marker of a project. “Sony’s looking at this like an artist launch, and we’re looking at it like a new chapter in music,” Maguire avows. “We definitely are going to tour this and make another record. I know this isn’t just a one-time, get-it-off-our-chests, get-these-songs-recorded-and-go-back-to-our-lives thing.”
Although Maguire is the lead vocalist on her own solo composition, “Gracefully,” the remainder of the tracks feature Robison singing material that arose out of a profoundly transitional period in her professional and personal life. “The first year of our hiatus, I was getting very restless and needed to be creative for my own sanity,” says Robison. “And at the same time I was going through my divorce”—from Texas singer/songwriter Charlie Robison—“so it was very fertile ground for writing.”
The personal material that Robison was penning pretty well dictated what kind of album they would make. To the extent that anyone even knew the sisters were working on a new project, there were rumors that it might be a back-to-roots album, since they spent their teen years together in a bluegrass band and carried over a certain amount of that influence to the Chicks’ country-rock. It’s not such a preposterous notion; even Maguire thought it might be fun to revert back to the string-band music of their youth. “I remember one early conversation we had, where I said to Emily, ‘Well, do you want to form a bluegrass band?’ I was excited about that, because I’d been in my studio, recording a bunch of fiddle tunes from my past. And Emily said, ‘No, not exactly. That’s not where my head is.’” They both laugh at exactly how far away from that Court Yard Hounds ended up being.
“Even though we played bluegrass,” Maguire says, “we listened to way more rock, folk-rock, and alternative music, and of course singer/songwriter stuff. And now I hear a lot of Shawn Colvin in Emily’s writing and voice. Because she is my sister and she was going through what she was going through, a lot of these songs brought me to tears. To hear her sing and express herself this way is very vulnerable, I think, and very brave.”
Fans know how much Maguire and Robison are willing to reveal through songwriting with their other band, from “You Were Mine,” a ballad about their parents’ divorce that appeared on the 12-times-platinum Wide Open Spaces, to “So Hard,” a song from Home that addressed the issues of infertility they both struggled with before having their respective children. But the frank emotions of the new album may still come as a surprise from a pair who were previously content to have someone else give voice to their deeper sentiments.
Rather than start off with a barnburner of an opener, it was Maguire’s suggestion that listeners be eased into the album with the subdued “Skyline,” which describes the inspiration Robison found just gazing at the view of San Antonio from her loft during a dark time. The song opens with just an acoustic guitar and Robison at her most tender, before a few soft drum rolls and Maguire’s lulling fiddle lead the ballad from the bitter into the sweet. Things then kick into higher gear—but, tellingly, stay in Texas—with “The Coast,” a good-times anthem that contentedly celebrates neither the east nor west but the south coast. There’s also a Texas theme to “See You in the Spring,” Robison’s duet with Jakob Dylan, the wry tale of a star-crossed couple from the northernmost and southernmost parts of the country who find their biggest obstacle is accepting each other’s climate change. Faster-paced songs range from the self-doubting feminine levity of “Then Again” to the fiery outrage of “Ain’t No Son,” a rocker sung from the myopic point of view of an angry, unaccepting father. Romantic themes veer between the bitter and sweet: “Fairytale” speaks to romantic enchantment, while there’s no happily-ever-after in sight in the breakup songs “April’s Love” and “It Didn’t Make a Sound.”
The initial impetus behind Robison’s writing was to contribute to a future Chicks project, but upon realizing that the group’s hiatus had no clear end in sight, she started trying to write for other artists and movie projects. One problem with that: The demos felt too deeply personal to give away—especially in light of the barrage of emails she would get from Maguire after each new demo, warning, “You better not pitch this or I’m going to kill you.”
At last, the eureka moment: Although Robison had never considered singing lead before—not even in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when the Chicks cycled through two other singers before finding Maines—there was a sudden acceptance of the fact that maybe the last 20 years of pure harmonizing could be taken to the next level. Yet egolessness had been so self-ingrained into Robison and Maguire that laying aside that humility still involved a process of discovery.
In Texas roots circles, the sisters had been well-known since they were pre-teen prodigies. Spurred on by their musically supportive parents, who would drive them from festival to festival, Martie joined her first band, the Blue Night Express, at 12, and a couple years later, Emily signed on, when she was 10. For all the instrumental training they had, though, there were no such formal lessons when it came to their sisterly harmonizing, which came from observing a lot of acts they saw on the bluegrass circuit, and, most probably, from something in the blood.
“There was always comfort in the power of numbers,” Maguire says. “Emily and I have that kind of personality where we’re happy to support and happy to not be the center of attention. I remember my mom dragging us into the living room to play for company. It’s a different story than you hear from a lot of lead singers, who say ‘Oh, I used to get up on the table when I was 2 and belt out songs!’ We were very reluctant, at a young age. So with this album it was nice to discover that we had this other side to us that came pretty easily. Every day our confidence grew.”
Adds Robison: “It can be intimidating when you sing with someone with the power that Natalie has. Martie and I have always been harmony singers, so you take your place in the mix. It was a huge learning curve for both of us—because Martie sings lead on one song, too—to figure out what your voice is, after you’ve sung so long just trying to blend. It really takes a lot of work, and there’s still a lot of work to be done, playing live, to find that voice. But I felt like I could interpret the songs because they meant something to me. It wasn’t like I was just trying to just sing any song. It was something very personal.”
After Robison worked on a good chunk of the material with guitarist Martin Strayer, they settled in with co-producer Jim Scott at Maguire’s studio in May 2009, coming back for a second and final round of recording in October. “It was amazingly quick compared to how long Chicks records usually take,” laughs Maguire. “I loved every song Emily had written. You can’t create a sound when you don’t have the songs.” There remained, though, a slight degree of uncertainty about whether this would be for public consumption: “We knew we would know if there was a record there. And if there wasn’t, we had confidence that we would be honest enough with ourselves to say, “That was a great exercise, but that’s not getting packaged.’”
After it was clear that self-veto power wouldn’t be necessary, the last element to come into play was a band name. Court Yard Hounds came from a novel Robison was reading called City of Thieves, by David Benioff. There’s a fictional book-within-the-book called The Courtyard Hound, but Emily points out that the specific impetus was “a quote in there about how inspiration comes and goes. The idea is that there are seasons of talent, and that at some point it’s gonna leave you, so you have to make the most of it when you are inspired.” It’s not difficult to see why that thought took root, with Maguire and Robison not wanting to let their own gifts lay fallow for another year, or even month.
It was a deliberate decision to fly under the media and rumor-mill radar while the recording was in process. “One reason I felt like we needed to not let the cat out of the bag too soon,” says Robison, “is that every time I would tell someone about the project, they’d say, ‘Well, who are you going to get as the lead singer?’ I would just kind of kick the dirt and go ‘Well… we’re gonna try our hand at it.’ Until you have the music and you can play it for people, it was hard to explain what we were trying to do. It was important for us to get the music done first so that we had that confidence.”
As Dixie Chicks, Maguire and Robison have grown used to having their private lives and thoughts put up for public scrutiny. Some Court Yard Hounds listeners may be eager to put every lyric up to a magnifying glass… and it’s not necessarily a completely misguided impulse, given that the sisters have penned obviously deeply felt songs before, even when Natalie was singing them. It’s no secret that Robison’s divorce sparked a good part of the material, but the sisters do discourage anyone from reading the album as a diary. “Everyone from our manager to our publicist already thinks it’s completely autobiographical, that everything’s so true and personal,” says Robison. “And it IS personal. But not everything is my life, even though people are gonna think it is. It’s better just to say that maybe 70% of it’s true, but I’m not gonna tell you which parts.” She laughs. “Keep ‘em guessing!”
How to classify Court Yard Hounds on the career spectrum? Baby band? Superstar vanity project? It’s neither, but Maguire and Robison admit it’s tough to determine exactly where they fit in as they scale down considerably from the arena level. “It’s like you’re a new band, yet you’re not,” Emily says. “So it’s trying to walk that line of, okay, we have certain standards for ourselves, but we don’t have the payroll yet to pay for this or that. It is exciting, being able to step back and really get in the trenches. It’s a lot of work, but at the same time, we’ve never really been afraid of proving ourselves and working hard. The only difference now from when we first started out is that we have families and it is important to keep that balance.”
And, possibly, a balance with that certain other band, down the line. “I think the elephant in the room for people is always ‘Well, what’s going on with the Chicks?’ When that presents itself, we’ll figure out how to marry the two,” says Robison. “Natalie will be the first one to tell you that she’s very supportive; she just doesn’t want to be in the studio and going through the whole process right now. Martie and I love to work and create and be making something, so being off was difficult for us. Just to be able to fulfill that and not have to dismantle the Dixie Chicks—why can’t we do both? We’re going to push to make it a complete entity and have fun with it.”
When fans see Maguire and Robison from now on, whether they’re at side or center stage, it’ll be with a greater sense of the individual personalities of the sisters who’ve seemed ubiquitous, yet just a little elusive for so many years. Their easy smiles and rapport with fans from the front rows to the rafters have gotten them pegged as “the friendly ones,” but the material on Court Yard Hounds proves them as complex as they are approachable.
“People do want to figure out: which one are you?” says Robison, of their traditional personas in the Chicks. “Martie’s ‘the nice one that smiles,’ I’m ‘the quiet one,’ and Natalie’s ‘the feisty one.’ And when you shake things up and make them see you in a different light, it kind of confuses people. So truly, as much as the song ‘Then Again’ is about me never wanting to shake things up, with age, I’ve come to this point where I just don’t care what people think as much.”
And not only was it worth the wait, this flowering simply had to wait. “I don’t think I could have done this five or ten years ago with Martie,” Emily affirms. “I would have been too timid, too shy, too ‘Oh no, I can’t do that.’ Now, I think, if some people don’t like it, that’s fine.” No lap dogs here: Court Yard Hounds are ready to get out and work it. “Even if we have just 10 percent of the people who reacted to us before, or only new fans, whatever it is…we can make something of that.”
On March 4, 2010, it has been announced that Court Yard Hounds will be performing at Lilith Fair 2010, which is back by popular demand. ABC is the official sponsor of this year's Lilith Fair. For more information on the tour schedule and artists visit the Lilith Fair official website.
Bio:
Strictly speaking, it’s only a few feet from stage left or stage right to the center spotlight. But it took Martie Maguire and Emily Robison a couple of decades to move those couple of yards. As the mainstays of the Dixie Chicks since they formed the group in 1989, the sisters have been familiar faces to many millions of fans, yet just a little mysterious in that familiarity, content as they were to cede the lead vocalist position and remain music’s most recognizable “sidewomen.” Chicks fans couldn’t help but hear those ever-present harmonies and wonder if Emily and Martie might ever come out from hiding in plain sight.
That’s just what they’ve done in their newly hatched incarnation as Court Yard Hounds, with a gorgeously assured debut album that has the siblings sounding like they’ve been fearless frontwomen all their lives. Is this band a side project? They can live with that label. Or something permanent? Yes, that, too.
Robison and Maguire could no sooner take an indefinite vacation from music than they could from being related. So as the mother band’s hiatus grew into a longer vacation than anyone originally anticipated, “dormant” began to equal “torment” for these two working musicians. The Dixie Chicks were last seen triumphing at the Grammys in early 2007, winning the exceedingly rare trifecta of album, record, and song of the year for Taking the Long Way and its flagship single “Not Ready to Make Nice.” Something else they weren’t ready to do was make records or tour again, at least for a long while, as it turned out. All three Chicks enjoyed family time away from the media glare—but after a while Maguire and Robison felt refreshed and rarin’ to go, which still left them one singer short of a quorum. The usually bold Maines’ reticence to put herself through the grind again had the effect of pushing her slightly shyer bandmates out of the nest.
“When Natalie first wanted to take a break,” says Maguire, “I remember this real fear in me, like: When are we getting back on the road? This is what I know! What will I do? I don’t have a college degree!” she recalls, laughing. Happily, rather than take night classes, they decided to school themselves in how to launch a new band. The Chicks haven’t disbanded, but Court Yard Hounds is no mere time-marker of a project. “Sony’s looking at this like an artist launch, and we’re looking at it like a new chapter in music,” Maguire avows. “We definitely are going to tour this and make another record. I know this isn’t just a one-time, get-it-off-our-chests, get-these-songs-recorded-and-go-back-to-our-lives thing.”
Although Maguire is the lead vocalist on her own solo composition, “Gracefully,” the remainder of the tracks feature Robison singing material that arose out of a profoundly transitional period in her professional and personal life. “The first year of our hiatus, I was getting very restless and needed to be creative for my own sanity,” says Robison. “And at the same time I was going through my divorce”—from Texas singer/songwriter Charlie Robison—“so it was very fertile ground for writing.”
The personal material that Robison was penning pretty well dictated what kind of album they would make. To the extent that anyone even knew the sisters were working on a new project, there were rumors that it might be a back-to-roots album, since they spent their teen years together in a bluegrass band and carried over a certain amount of that influence to the Chicks’ country-rock. It’s not such a preposterous notion; even Maguire thought it might be fun to revert back to the string-band music of their youth. “I remember one early conversation we had, where I said to Emily, ‘Well, do you want to form a bluegrass band?’ I was excited about that, because I’d been in my studio, recording a bunch of fiddle tunes from my past. And Emily said, ‘No, not exactly. That’s not where my head is.’” They both laugh at exactly how far away from that Court Yard Hounds ended up being.
“Even though we played bluegrass,” Maguire says, “we listened to way more rock, folk-rock, and alternative music, and of course singer/songwriter stuff. And now I hear a lot of Shawn Colvin in Emily’s writing and voice. Because she is my sister and she was going through what she was going through, a lot of these songs brought me to tears. To hear her sing and express herself this way is very vulnerable, I think, and very brave.”
Fans know how much Maguire and Robison are willing to reveal through songwriting with their other band, from “You Were Mine,” a ballad about their parents’ divorce that appeared on the 12-times-platinum Wide Open Spaces, to “So Hard,” a song from Home that addressed the issues of infertility they both struggled with before having their respective children. But the frank emotions of the new album may still come as a surprise from a pair who were previously content to have someone else give voice to their deeper sentiments.
Rather than start off with a barnburner of an opener, it was Maguire’s suggestion that listeners be eased into the album with the subdued “Skyline,” which describes the inspiration Robison found just gazing at the view of San Antonio from her loft during a dark time. The song opens with just an acoustic guitar and Robison at her most tender, before a few soft drum rolls and Maguire’s lulling fiddle lead the ballad from the bitter into the sweet. Things then kick into higher gear—but, tellingly, stay in Texas—with “The Coast,” a good-times anthem that contentedly celebrates neither the east nor west but the south coast. There’s also a Texas theme to “See You in the Spring,” Robison’s duet with Jakob Dylan, the wry tale of a star-crossed couple from the northernmost and southernmost parts of the country who find their biggest obstacle is accepting each other’s climate change. Faster-paced songs range from the self-doubting feminine levity of “Then Again” to the fiery outrage of “Ain’t No Son,” a rocker sung from the myopic point of view of an angry, unaccepting father. Romantic themes veer between the bitter and sweet: “Fairytale” speaks to romantic enchantment, while there’s no happily-ever-after in sight in the breakup songs “April’s Love” and “It Didn’t Make a Sound.”
The initial impetus behind Robison’s writing was to contribute to a future Chicks project, but upon realizing that the group’s hiatus had no clear end in sight, she started trying to write for other artists and movie projects. One problem with that: The demos felt too deeply personal to give away—especially in light of the barrage of emails she would get from Maguire after each new demo, warning, “You better not pitch this or I’m going to kill you.”
At last, the eureka moment: Although Robison had never considered singing lead before—not even in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when the Chicks cycled through two other singers before finding Maines—there was a sudden acceptance of the fact that maybe the last 20 years of pure harmonizing could be taken to the next level. Yet egolessness had been so self-ingrained into Robison and Maguire that laying aside that humility still involved a process of discovery.
In Texas roots circles, the sisters had been well-known since they were pre-teen prodigies. Spurred on by their musically supportive parents, who would drive them from festival to festival, Martie joined her first band, the Blue Night Express, at 12, and a couple years later, Emily signed on, when she was 10. For all the instrumental training they had, though, there were no such formal lessons when it came to their sisterly harmonizing, which came from observing a lot of acts they saw on the bluegrass circuit, and, most probably, from something in the blood.
“There was always comfort in the power of numbers,” Maguire says. “Emily and I have that kind of personality where we’re happy to support and happy to not be the center of attention. I remember my mom dragging us into the living room to play for company. It’s a different story than you hear from a lot of lead singers, who say ‘Oh, I used to get up on the table when I was 2 and belt out songs!’ We were very reluctant, at a young age. So with this album it was nice to discover that we had this other side to us that came pretty easily. Every day our confidence grew.”
Adds Robison: “It can be intimidating when you sing with someone with the power that Natalie has. Martie and I have always been harmony singers, so you take your place in the mix. It was a huge learning curve for both of us—because Martie sings lead on one song, too—to figure out what your voice is, after you’ve sung so long just trying to blend. It really takes a lot of work, and there’s still a lot of work to be done, playing live, to find that voice. But I felt like I could interpret the songs because they meant something to me. It wasn’t like I was just trying to just sing any song. It was something very personal.”
After Robison worked on a good chunk of the material with guitarist Martin Strayer, they settled in with co-producer Jim Scott at Maguire’s studio in May 2009, coming back for a second and final round of recording in October. “It was amazingly quick compared to how long Chicks records usually take,” laughs Maguire. “I loved every song Emily had written. You can’t create a sound when you don’t have the songs.” There remained, though, a slight degree of uncertainty about whether this would be for public consumption: “We knew we would know if there was a record there. And if there wasn’t, we had confidence that we would be honest enough with ourselves to say, “That was a great exercise, but that’s not getting packaged.’”
After it was clear that self-veto power wouldn’t be necessary, the last element to come into play was a band name. Court Yard Hounds came from a novel Robison was reading called City of Thieves, by David Benioff. There’s a fictional book-within-the-book called The Courtyard Hound, but Emily points out that the specific impetus was “a quote in there about how inspiration comes and goes. The idea is that there are seasons of talent, and that at some point it’s gonna leave you, so you have to make the most of it when you are inspired.” It’s not difficult to see why that thought took root, with Maguire and Robison not wanting to let their own gifts lay fallow for another year, or even month.
It was a deliberate decision to fly under the media and rumor-mill radar while the recording was in process. “One reason I felt like we needed to not let the cat out of the bag too soon,” says Robison, “is that every time I would tell someone about the project, they’d say, ‘Well, who are you going to get as the lead singer?’ I would just kind of kick the dirt and go ‘Well… we’re gonna try our hand at it.’ Until you have the music and you can play it for people, it was hard to explain what we were trying to do. It was important for us to get the music done first so that we had that confidence.”
As Dixie Chicks, Maguire and Robison have grown used to having their private lives and thoughts put up for public scrutiny. Some Court Yard Hounds listeners may be eager to put every lyric up to a magnifying glass… and it’s not necessarily a completely misguided impulse, given that the sisters have penned obviously deeply felt songs before, even when Natalie was singing them. It’s no secret that Robison’s divorce sparked a good part of the material, but the sisters do discourage anyone from reading the album as a diary. “Everyone from our manager to our publicist already thinks it’s completely autobiographical, that everything’s so true and personal,” says Robison. “And it IS personal. But not everything is my life, even though people are gonna think it is. It’s better just to say that maybe 70% of it’s true, but I’m not gonna tell you which parts.” She laughs. “Keep ‘em guessing!”
How to classify Court Yard Hounds on the career spectrum? Baby band? Superstar vanity project? It’s neither, but Maguire and Robison admit it’s tough to determine exactly where they fit in as they scale down considerably from the arena level. “It’s like you’re a new band, yet you’re not,” Emily says. “So it’s trying to walk that line of, okay, we have certain standards for ourselves, but we don’t have the payroll yet to pay for this or that. It is exciting, being able to step back and really get in the trenches. It’s a lot of work, but at the same time, we’ve never really been afraid of proving ourselves and working hard. The only difference now from when we first started out is that we have families and it is important to keep that balance.”
And, possibly, a balance with that certain other band, down the line. “I think the elephant in the room for people is always ‘Well, what’s going on with the Chicks?’ When that presents itself, we’ll figure out how to marry the two,” says Robison. “Natalie will be the first one to tell you that she’s very supportive; she just doesn’t want to be in the studio and going through the whole process right now. Martie and I love to work and create and be making something, so being off was difficult for us. Just to be able to fulfill that and not have to dismantle the Dixie Chicks—why can’t we do both? We’re going to push to make it a complete entity and have fun with it.”
When fans see Maguire and Robison from now on, whether they’re at side or center stage, it’ll be with a greater sense of the individual personalities of the sisters who’ve seemed ubiquitous, yet just a little elusive for so many years. Their easy smiles and rapport with fans from the front rows to the rafters have gotten them pegged as “the friendly ones,” but the material on Court Yard Hounds proves them as complex as they are approachable.
“People do want to figure out: which one are you?” says Robison, of their traditional personas in the Chicks. “Martie’s ‘the nice one that smiles,’ I’m ‘the quiet one,’ and Natalie’s ‘the feisty one.’ And when you shake things up and make them see you in a different light, it kind of confuses people. So truly, as much as the song ‘Then Again’ is about me never wanting to shake things up, with age, I’ve come to this point where I just don’t care what people think as much.”
And not only was it worth the wait, this flowering simply had to wait. “I don’t think I could have done this five or ten years ago with Martie,” Emily affirms. “I would have been too timid, too shy, too ‘Oh no, I can’t do that.’ Now, I think, if some people don’t like it, that’s fine.” No lap dogs here: Court Yard Hounds are ready to get out and work it. “Even if we have just 10 percent of the people who reacted to us before, or only new fans, whatever it is…we can make something of that.”
On March 4, 2010, it has been announced that Court Yard Hounds will be performing at Lilith Fair 2010, which is back by popular demand. ABC is the official sponsor of this year's Lilith Fair. For more information on the tour schedule and artists visit the Lilith Fair official website.
Sunshine
Court Yard Hounds Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You tell me that you don't like people
You can only believe in yourself
You pity all those who lack your higher breeding
So I can see the reason you don't have anybody left
Could it be the way you wear your fur on the inside,
Prefer not to go outside where the sky's way too blue?
Tonight you'll grace us with all your inner presence
While your back-handed compliments let the air out of the room
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
We call you sunshine
I'm just an angel that sits upon your shoulder
Says the world will pass you over while you're waiting for a crown
You're no stranger to the art of how to fake it
You play until you break it, you make it hard to be around
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
We call you sunshine
We call you sunshine
Hey
Hey
Someday you'll be up on your mountain
High above the clouds where you can never be found
But you start a fire just to beg for intervention
You like the drama and attention, God forbid we bring you down
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
We call you sunshine
We call you sunshine
You can only believe in yourself
You pity all those who lack your higher breeding
So I can see the reason you don't have anybody left
Could it be the way you wear your fur on the inside,
Prefer not to go outside where the sky's way too blue?
Tonight you'll grace us with all your inner presence
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
We call you sunshine
I'm just an angel that sits upon your shoulder
Says the world will pass you over while you're waiting for a crown
You're no stranger to the art of how to fake it
You play until you break it, you make it hard to be around
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
We call you sunshine
We call you sunshine
Hey
Hey
Someday you'll be up on your mountain
High above the clouds where you can never be found
But you start a fire just to beg for intervention
You like the drama and attention, God forbid we bring you down
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
We call you sunshine
We call you sunshine
The song "Sunshine" by Court Yard Hounds is a track that depicts a toxic relationship where one partner is constantly bringing the other down. The lyrics talk about the person's self-centered attitude and their inability to appreciate other people. The opening lines, "You tell me that you don't like people, you can only believe in yourself," show that the person has an inflated ego and thinks they are better than other people.
The verses describe how the person's negative attitude affects those around them. They are judgmental and condescending towards others, which leads them to push people away. The chorus repeatedly pleads, "Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time. Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine. We call you sunshine." This shows that although the person may think they are bringing light to people's lives, they are actually doing the opposite.
The final verse speaks about the person's future, where they may end up on their own high above everyone else, but they still won't be happy. The line, "You start a fire just to beg for intervention," suggests that they thrive on drama and negative attention, even when they are alone. The song ends with the repeated chorus, emphasizing the main message of the song - the person may be called sunshine, but they are actually a dark cloud in other people's lives.
Line by Line Meaning
You tell me that you don't like people
You have expressed your dislike for people.
You can only believe in yourself
You have faith only in yourself.
You pity all those who lack your higher breeding
You feel sorry for those who are not born of your same class.
So I can see the reason you don't have anybody left
It is understandable why you do not have anyone left.
Could it be the way you wear your fur on the inside,
Perhaps it is because you pretend to be someone you are not.
Prefer not to go outside where the sky's way too blue?
Do you not go outside because everything appears too happy?
Tonight you'll grace us with all your inner presence
You will be present with us tonight.
While your back-handed compliments let the air out of the room
Your insincere compliments ruin the mood.
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Do not ruin the perfect day and waste my time with your negativity.
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
You always have a tendency to bring me down when I am feeling good.
We call you sunshine
You are referred to as sunshine ironically.
I'm just an angel that sits upon your shoulder
I am simply a being that influences your actions.
Says the world will pass you over while you're waiting for a crown
The world will disregard you while you wait for recognition.
You're no stranger to the art of how to fake it
You are familiar with how to pretend to be someone you are not.
You play until you break it, you make it hard to be around
You continue to pretend until it becomes unbearable to be around.
Someday you'll be up on your mountain
One day you will attain success.
High above the clouds where you can never be found
You will be so successful that you will be unreachable.
But you start a fire just to beg for intervention
You create drama to gain attention and intervention.
You like the drama and attention, God forbid we bring you down
You enjoy the drama and attention, and anyone who brings you down is an enemy.
Hey, don't rain on my parade and kill a perfect day, wasting my time
Do not ruin the perfect day and waste my time with your negativity.
Hey, you always find a way to bring me down when I feel fine
You always have a tendency to bring me down when I am feeling good.
We call you sunshine
You are referred to as sunshine ironically.
Hey
Hey.
Hey
Hey.
Lyrics © WORDS & MUSIC A DIV OF BIG DEAL MUSIC LLC, BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group, Peermusic Publishing, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Fintage House Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: ALEX DEZEN, MARTY STRAYER, EMILY ROBINSON, MARTY MCGUIRE, JONATHA BROOKE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Annon Ommus
Jon Doeringer
I still think everyone is entitled to their opinion and freedom of speech, however, when you are outside of the country in a small way you represent America to all those you come in contact with. That is true of the average tourist and more so if you have a public forum. For that reason people here had every right to be upset at bad mouthing the President to foreigners.
Had she made the exact same statement at a concert in Austin she would most likely received as many cheers as boos. She would have from me because I haven't liked a President sense Regan and every one of them sense daddy Bush has been trying to destroy the constitution and make us all citizens of Bush's "New World Order". I could write a book on why that is bad not just for America but for the whole world but that is off topic.
The point is, she did the same thing, though not nearly as bad and not at all traitorous, as Hanoi Jane; she went out side of America to bad mouth her own nation by insulting our President. Hate him all you want, God knows I did, but most patriotic Americans while fighting for your freedom to protest, insult and otherwise hate the man in the oval office anywhere you like in this country realize that doing the same thing only brings shame to out nation when done abroad.
The thing that is most said is it was a darn good group and I for one miss them. She made that statement from when I saw in their movie, without asking the others and even with all of the fall out still thinks her opinion is the only one that matters. Even if she didn't mean it an immediate apology to the nation and her fans would have gone a long way. Country music fans can forgive an awful lot, but contrition for wrongs needs to be shown. Even if she still thought she was right and did nothing wrong if you hurt people that care about you you are still wrong; ask any man that has ever been married how important it is to apologize even if you still think you were right.
She has talent, a lot of it too, and I'd bet that if she chose to she could ask for forgiveness even now and restart her carrier. Jane Fonda, after committing treason, finally figured that out and while her father was able to protect her from prosecution all those years she couldn't work in her profession because most of America refused to go to her movies. She was reduced to having to sell herself to rich old Ted Turner to live the life style she was used to. While I personally wouldn't cross the street to piss on her if she were on fire, she was able to convince most of the nation that she had changed and was now a good person and is back to acting. So there is no reason that our mouthy Dixie Chick couldn't do the same; I hope she does.
Rangers Fan Jill
This is such a great song. Martie and Emily are loaded with talent. The album "Amelita" should have received a lot more attention than it did. It's great!
Tiger's Eye
I am super happy to see the two ladies that dont get much camera time or vocals shine in this band. :D
Michelle Speert
More records please!! We LOVE Courtyard Hounds!!
fireboyisme
Emily had an amazing voice. Their first album is awesome. I love these two
Hermes&Hera
Cant wait for the new cd. The sisters are starting to find and establish their style. Gotta love their spirit and talent to match it!
Rebecca Maillette
LOVING these girls and the beautiful music they create together.
MrCherokeeguy98
Love the harmonies and the live sound kicks ass too :)
mandy hay
I wish I had found them sooner too!! So refreshing to hear AUTHENTIC bluegrass. I don't know what has happened to mainstream country music, but it's just not the same to me!!! These girls, however, are crazy talented!
Moonshine Mollys
You two are just so wonderful. Thank you for doing what you do. You are both so lovely.
Tee Murrs
the sisters never get credit for how amazing they are as musicians. they play at least 6 different instruments between they. i love them. but i prefer their lovely voices as harmony. But they are born to play so bless them and i hope they keep making music :)