The Busy Girl Buys Beauty

by Billy Bragg

From the album: Back to Basics

Track 7 of 21 on Back to Basics (1987).

Duration: 1:58

Back to Basics cover art

Lyrics for The Busy Girl Buys Beauty

The busy girl buys beauty The pretty girl buys style And the simple girl Buys what she's told to buy And sees her world Through the brightly lit eyes of the glossy romance of fashion Where she can learn top tips for the gas cook Successful secrets of a sexual kind The daily drill for beautiful hair And the truth about pain What was Anna Ford wearing? What did Angela Rippon say? What will you do when you wake up one morning To find that god's made you plain In a beautiful person's world? And all those quick recipes have let you down And you're twenty and half and not yet engaged Will you go look for the boy who says I love you let's get married and have kids The busy girl buys beauty The pretty girl buys style And the simple girl Buys what she's told to buy And sees her world Through the brightly lit eyes of the glossy romance of fashion Where she can learn top tips for the gas cook Successful secrets of a sexual kind The daily drill for beautiful hair In a mail order paradise

Listen On

More from Back to Basics

  1. The Milkman of Human Kindness
  2. To Have and to Have Not
  3. Richard
  4. Lovers Town Revisited
  5. A New England
  6. The Man in the Iron Mask
  7. The Busy Girl Buys Beauty
  8. It Says Here
  9. Love Gets Dangerous
  10. From a Vauxhall Velox
  11. The Myth of Trust
  12. The Saturday Boy
  13. Island of No Return
  14. This Guitar Says Sorry
  15. Like Soldiers Do
  16. St. Swithin's Day
  17. Strange Things Happen
  18. A Lover Sings
  19. Between the Wars
  20. The World Turned Upside Down
  21. Which Side Are You On