Leaving London while it’s sleeping , the streets can turn to gold but I don’t care
It’s a city full of dreamers, to me their dreams are nightmares
In the cool and solitary dawn you’d think maybe this road goes on forever
It can take you to a land of need and shame, it can take you to a land of greed and pleasure

Chorus:

And I’m northbound in the pouring rain and nobody knows my name
I’m northbound in the pouring rain and nobody knows my name, nobody knows my name

You’re floating on an iron river, though the suburbs on the last stops of the underground
The tube trains standing soaking in the station wait for another morning to come round
And finally the city ends where the motorway begins and the fields are striped with tarmac
In your rear-view mirror the wet slate rooves recede and the red-brick houses standing back to back

Chorus

From the near horizon, defiant and majestic, the silhouetted superstore arrives
This once great trading nation is a land of Sunday shoppers filling up the boxes in their lives
The age of information is making all the rules now, the white coats run the game
And a forgotten class of artisans never get to play and won’t ever have to work again

Chorus

The plains turn into peaks, the valleys drop down deep, the rivers cut their way along the floor
The backbone of the country is a little older now and can’t carry the same cargo anymore
A hundred years of industry have risen high and fallen, these towns were built on blood and bone
The cooling towers pour smoke into the sky as signals to the wanderers heading home

Chorus