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Joan Baez - Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word [HD]

2,873 views · Published 29 September 2017 · 4:30 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: Gary Larson · 2017 · People & Blogs

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Joan Baez sings the Bob Dylan song 'Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word' from her 1968 Vanguard album 'Any Day Now'. She recorded the song three more times with this first version also released as a single. Dylan himself never recorded it. The song lyrics are in the video and listed below.

The double meaning, both literal and pejorative, of the title and refrain "love is just a four-letter word" is plain and the singer's journey from experience "limited and underfed" to deciding that, yes, she can only agree that "love is just a four-letter word" was a challenge to put into images, but here it is.

[Vinyl/Lyrics/25-Images/WAV}


Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word

Singer - Joan Baez

Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the gypsy cafe
With a friend of a friend of mine

Who sat with baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
The phrase in connection first that she occurred
That love is just a four-letter word

Outside a rambling store-front window
Cats meowed to the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut
To you I had no words to say

My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn't think I did, but I heard you say
That love is just a four-letter word

I said goodbye unnoticed
Pushed forth into my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name

Searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that
There was nothing more absurd than
That love is just a four-letter word

Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man
I can only think in terms of me
And now I understand

After waking enough times to think I see
The holy kiss that's supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be assured
That love is just a four-letter word

Strange it is to be beside you
Many years, the tables turned
You'd probably not believe me
If I told you all I've learned

And it is very, very weird indeed
To hear words like forever plead
Those ships run through my mind, I cannot cheat
It's like looking in the teacher's face complete
I can say nothing to you but repeat what I heard
That love is just a four-letter word

Songwriter:  Bob Dylan

© Bob Dylan Music Co.

[Lyrics from LyricFind]

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