Post office clerks put up signs saying position closed And secretaries turn off typewriters and put on their coats Janitors padlock the gates For security guards to patrol And bachelors phone up their friends for a drink While the married ones turn on a chat show

And they'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Gentlemen, time please, you know we can't serve anymore Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there's nothing to go And by five o'clock everything's dead And every third car is a cab And ignorant people sleep in their beds Like the doped white mice in the college lab

CHORUS: Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all The needle returns to the start of the song And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Telephone exchanges click while there's nobody there The Martians could land in the carpark and no one would care Close-circuit cameras in department stores shoot the same video every day And the stars of these films neither die nor get killed Just survive constant action replay

CHORUS: Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all The needle returns to the start of the song And we all sing along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

Bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs While angry from Manchester writes to complain about All the repeats on T.V. And computer terminals report some gains On the values of copper and tin While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs For the price of a hospital wing

CHORUS: Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all The needle returns to the start of the song And we all sing along like before Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all They'll burn down the synagogues at six o'clock And we'll all go along like before

And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow