Carrying the Banner is the second song in the musical Newsies.
Lyrics[]
Race: Hey! That's my cigar!!
Albert: You'll steal another!
Specs: (referring to the other boys) HEY, LOOK, IT’S BATH TIME AT THE ZOO!
Henry: I thought that I'd surprise my mother,
Albert: If you can find her!
Newsies: Hey, WHO ASKED YOU?!
Race: From bottle alley to the Harbor
There's easy pickings guarenteed
Finch: Try any banker, bum or Barber,
They almost all knows how to read!
Jack: It's a crooked game we're playing, one will never lose
And ong as suckers don't mind paying, just to get this through (bad news)...
Newsies: Ain't it a fine life, carrying the banner through it all!
A mighty fine life, carrying the banner tough and tall!
Every morning, we goes where we wishes
We're as free as fishes, sure beats washing dishes
What a fine life, carrying the banner home-free all!
Finch: (Speaking) Hey, Crutchie, what’s your leg say? Gonna rain?
Crutchie: (Speaking) (shakes his leg) No rain. Partly cloudy. Clear by evening!
Race: Ha! And the limp sells fifty papes a week all by itself!
Crutchie: I don’t need the limp to sell papes. I got personality!
Crutchie: (Singing) It takes a smile that spreads like butter
The kind that turns a lady's head
Race: It takes an orphan with a stutter
Finch: Who's also blind,
Albert: And mute!
Elmer: And dead!
Crutchie, Buttons & Jo Jo: Summer stinks and the winter's waiting, when you works outdoors!
Jack, Tommy Boy, Crutchie, Buttons & Jo Jo: start out sweating, end up sneezing, wait between it pours Oh!
Newsies: Still, it's a fine life, carrying the banner with me chums!
A bunch of big shots, tossing out a freebie to the bums!
Finch: Hey, what's the hold up? Waiting makes me antsy
I like living chancy
Newsies: Harlem going to Delancy
What a fine life, carrying the banner through the slums!
Nuns: Blessed children though you wander, lost and depraved
Jesus loves you! You shall be saved!
(simultaneously with below)
Race: Curdled coffee Concrete Doughnuts sprinkled with mold
Homemade bicuites, just two years old!
Nuns: Blessed children, Ah
Jesus loves you, Ah
Elmer: Just gimmie half a cup,
Henry: Something to wake me up?
Romeo: I gotta find an angle,
Tommy Boy: It's getting bad out there!
Mush: Papers is all I got,
Specs: It's eighty-eight degrees
Jo Jo: Jack says to change my spot,
Sniper: Wish I could catch a breeze
Finch: Maybe it's worth a shot,
Buttons: All I can catch is flees
Jack: If I hate the headlines, I'll make up the headline
Jack & Crutchie: And I'll say anything I have to
Cause at two for a penny
Jack, Crutchie, Race & Romeo: If I take too many
If I take too many, Weasel just makes me eat them after
(simultaneously with below)
Newsie Group 1: Got a feeling about the headline, I smells me a headline
Papes are gonna sell like we, we giving them away
Beatcha dinner it's a doozy, about a pistol-packing floozy
Who knows how, to make a newsies day?
Newsie Group 2: We'll do, too! So it must be true!
What a switch! Soon we'll all be rich!
Don't know any better way, to make a newsie's day?
Newsies: You wanna move this next edition!
Give us an earthquake or a war!
Elmer: How about a crooked politician?
Newsies: You nitwit stupid, that ain't news no more!!
Uptown to Grand Central Station, down to City Hall
We improves our circulation, walking till we fall!
(simultaneously with below)
Newsies Group 2: Still we'll be out here, carrying the banner man to man!
We'll be out here, soaking every suck a that we can!
See the headline: Newsies on a mission! Kill the competition, sell the next edition!
We'll be out there, carrying the banner
See us out there, carrying the banner!
Always out there carrying the banner!
Newsies Group 1: Got a feeling about the headline, I smells me a headline
Papes are gonna sell like we, we giving them away
Beatcha dinner it's a doozy, about a pistol-packing floozy
Who knows how, to make a newsies day?
I was staking out the circus, and then someone said
That coney's really hot, but when I got there
There was spot with, all his cronies
Heck, I'm gonna take what, little dough I've got
And play with the ponies!
We at least deserves a headline, for the hours that
They work us, jeez, I bet if I just stayed
A little longer, at the circus…
Newsies: Still we'll be out here, carrying the banner man to man!
We'll be out here, soaking every suck a that we can!
See the headline: Newsies on a mission! Kill the competition, sell the next edition!
Newsies Group 2: We'll be out there, carrying the banner
See us out there, carrying the banner!
Always out there carrying the banner!
Newsies Group 1: Go get them cowboy! You got them now boy!
Go get them cowboy! You got them now boy! Go!
Newsies: Ah, ah, ah, ah, it's a go!