We practiced up for decades on accordion and guitar
In secrecy, we silently built up our repertoire
We booked ourselves a so-called “tour” across the 50 states
We even scored a bargain flight — our scheme was going great!

Assuming false identities, we cased the five-and-dime,
Securing the supplies with which to hatch our fiendish crime
And no one at the ticket counter knew it was a plot
You bet we packed our bags ourselves, so you don’t know we’ve got

Nail Clippers! Nail Clippers!
You know it won’t be pretty if you don’t meet our demands
Nail Clippers! Nail Clippers!
These clippers speak a language everybody understands
We’ll clip the nails of everybody on this jumbo jet!
We’ll give you folks a manicure you never will forget!
No one in the air suspects
it’s their nails we’ll be buffing next
and when we say “All hands on deck,”
we really mean all hands!

The X-Ray gizmo shuddered and sent out a piercing scream
In seconds, we’re surrounded by a clipper-stripping team
In our secret language, Andy said “I guess we should
have spent the extra twenty on those clippers made of wood!”

Nail Clippers! Nail Clippers!
The scandal, the ignominy, how shamefully we failed
Nail Clippers! Nail Clippers!
Just one miscalculation and our plans were all derailed
With our intentions thwarted to enact our heinous crime,
We were forced to just go on the trip and have a lovely time
Who’d have thought they’d confiscate
our implements of fear and hate
before we’d even reached the gate,
our clippers had been nailed!

We felt like total cretins, so we hopped a ship to Crete
and there we sat for months to nurse the wounds of our defeat
We didn’t read the papers, and we didn’t watch the press
until the day we finally got word from the US:

America is shut down from New York to Santa Cruz
Their nails have grown so long that they can’t even tie their shoes
They’ve punctured all their cell phones, their computers are in scraps
Their weapons are all useless, and their government’s collapsed!

Nail Clippers! Nail Clippers!
More mighty than the pen, the sword, the cell phone, and the gun
Nail Clippers! Nail Clippers!
The levelers of empires — oh, the awesome deeds they’ve done!
America the beautiful is seeking freedom fighters
who’ll sacrifice their cuticles, a squad of nail-biters
But it’ll be a little while
before they join the rank and file
their nails down to a functional style
Ha ha — too late — we won!