Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems  

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1959 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1987.

Chorus:
The faucets are dripping in old New York City,
The faucets are dripping and oh, what a pity,
The reservoir's drying because it's supplying
The faucets that drip in New York.

You can't ask the landlord to put in a washer,
He'd rather you move than to put in a washer,
The faucets are dripping, they sound in my ears,
The tap in the bathroom's been running for years.

(Chorus)

There's a wild streak of green in the sink in the kitchen,
It comes from the rill trickling out of the plumbing,
The streams from the mountains, the pools from the lea,
All run from my faucet and down to the sea.

(Chorus)

You can't ask the landlord to put in a washer,
You can't ask the landlord to mend the old stairs,
He takes in the rents and he lives in Miami,
Where faucets don't drip and there's sun everywheres.

(Chorus)

The faucets are dripping, the landlord's content.
With every new tenant he raises the rent,
The buildings can crumble, the tenants can cry,
There's a shortage of housing, you'll live there or die.

(Chorus)

They're building some buildings and fine city centers,
It's sure working hard on the low-income renters,
They're jammed into rooms with the rat and the fly
Where the faucets all drip and the floor's never dry.

(Chorus)

Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs
---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook
---- There's Music in the Air: Songs for the Middle-Young

Other place(s) where the music to this song appears:
---- Peter Blood and Annie Patterson: Rise Up Singing: The Group-Singing Song Book [lyrics & guitar chords only] (Bethlehem, PA: Sing Out Corp., 1992)
---- Peter and Annie Blood-Patterson: Winds of the People [lyrics & guitar chords only] (Sing Out, 1980?)
---- Peter Blood-Patterson: Rise Up Singing: The Group-Singing Song Book [lyrics & guitar chords only] (Bethlehem, PA: Sing Out Corp., 1988), p. 18
---- Broadside No. 35 (20 November 1963)
---- Jim Morse and Nancy Mathews: The Sierra Club Survival Songbook (San Francisco and New York: The Sierra Club, 1971)

Malvina Reynolds recordings of this song:
---- Another County Heard From
---- The Best of Broadside 1962-1988 (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW CD 40130, 2000)
---- We Won't Move! Songs of the Tenants' Movement (Folkways FS 5287, 1983)
---- listen to youtube.com video

Recordings by other artists on which this song is performed:
---- The Broadside Singers: The Broadside Singers (Folkways 5303/Broadside Records 303, 1964)
---- Pete Seeger: God Bless the Grass (Columbia CL 2432, 1966)
---- listen to youtube.com video
---- listen to youtube.com video
---- listen to youtube.com video
---- listen to youtube.com video