Today is May 11th.
If you’ve watched Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, you know the importance of that date. I’ve always found it wild that Harry Nilsson – who had soft songs like “Without You” and happy ones like “Everything is Food” & “Gotta Get Up” – would just go so hard into a song like Jump Into the Fire. The bassline gets your heart pumping and then the guitar makes your head bob.
In the scene, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is having a very busy morning that isn’t going too well. The sequence also features another great song in George Harrison’s “What is Life”, but we’ll save that for another day. If you haven’t watched Goodfellas, the scene has some slight spoilers, but nothing too terrible. You should really also consider watching the entire film, it’s brilliant.
Below is the scene from the film, and below that is the song itself.
Enjoy!
Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
You can climb a mountain
You can swim the sea
You can jump into the fire
But you’ll never be free
You can shake me up
Or I can bring you down
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
[Chorus]
We can make each other happy
Oh, we can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
[Verse 2]
You can climb a mountain
You can swim the sea
You can jump into the fire
But you’ll never be free, no, no
You can shake me up
Or I can bring you down
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
[Chorus]
We can make each other happy
Oh, we can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
Whoa!
[Verse 3]
You can climb a mountain
You can swim the sea
You can jump into the fire
But you’ll never be free, no, no
You can shake me up
Or I can bring you down
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
[Chorus]
We can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
[Outro]
Whoa!
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Whoa!