Snowbird was just a little girl once
All tangled up in dandelion hair and polka dots
And a picture book mind full of dreams and designs
And visions of faraway places

Yeah, she drew underwater worlds and cities in the stars
In the Asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars
In felt tips and crayons her little works of art
All promised a future of greatness

She caught the sunlight in her eye
Underneath the winter sky
"I'll paint the world until I die", she said
"One day I'll spread my wings and fly high like a snowbird"

Yes, I will

Her daddy died when she was only ten
But all she cried came out in ink and in pen
She drew charcoal streets leading down to dead ends
Where heads hung low in sorrow

But she was left a small fortune at the reading of the will
About enough for a life and then another life still
And with her mother in a haze of vodka and pills
Snowbird had just dreamed of tomorrow

She caught the sunlight in her eye
Underneath the winter sky
"I'll paint the world until I die", she said
"One day I'll spread my wings and fly high like a snowbird"

Yes, I will
That's right

Years went by and she hit eighteen
And left home for the art-school scene
To paint the people of the shadows and the faces unseen
For her hero was now Egon Schiele

But she did a couple of little canvases and bad super 8
And a conceptual piece that was thirty years too late
It was all she could fit between the dinner and the dates
With dreamers and drummers and dealers

She caught the sunlight in her eye
Underneath the winter sky
"I'll paint the world until I die", and she said
"One day I'll spread my wings and fly high like a snowbird"

Yes, I will

Well, who's that girl in the little black dress?
Her head held high like a real princess
A glimmering, shimmering, coked up mess
A fashion trash, art school failure

Yeah, her fingernails are all there's left to paint in her world
She dishes out the dirt with the party powder girls
Who think love comes in diamonds and wisdom in pearls
And art is just paraphernalia

She's lost the sunlight from her eye
There's only a mirror ball left in her sky
"I'll do what I want till the day that I die
Now see me spread my wings, I can fly high like a snowbird

Snowbird was just a little girl once, she was
Snowbird was just a little girl once
Snowbird was just a little girl once, she was
Snowbird was just a little girl once but now she can fly