Velvet shadows on cracked gold walls
A gramophone in mirrored halls
Powdered faces, sequins flash
And dancers drown in perfume ash

The city hums in greased deceit
With jazz-soaked rain on cobbled street
A thousand masks, a single need
To drink before the demons feed

Metropolis in velvet skin
We laugh too loud, we sin to win
With trembling lips and fevered eyes
We waltz beneath collapsing skies

Mark slips, the paper floods
The champagne hides the rising blood
The girls still twirl, the bands still play
As futures flicker night to day

From Kreuzberg dives to Charlott’ clubs
The world dissolves in opium rubs
And under lace and roaring beat
The cold wind whispers from the East

Metropolis in velvet skin
The past is gone, the war won’t end
We kiss in smoke, we dance on wire
And call it art while stoking fire

Reflections cracked in barroom glass
The jokes grow stale, the tempers pass
And though the stage wears rouge and grace
The shadows crawl through every face

Metropolis, we wrote our sin
In lipstick trails and violins
And as the sirens draw too near
We toast to dreams, not to the year

Berlin, you burned so bright, so fast
But velvet’s never meant to last