Raise Your Glass Lyrics

Getting the Words Right on Raise Your Glass

Most people just want to sing along at a party and can't be bothered to check every word. I get it. But the lyrics to Raise Your Glass by Lady Gaga have some lines that are easy to mess up if you're just guessing from memory. The song came out in 2011 as part of the Born This Way era and became one of her more radio-friendly tracks, but the actual lyric sheet tells a slightly different story than most covers online do. Here's the full thing, word for word. I've seen several fan sites get the second verse wrong, so pay attention to the details below. We are the champions, no, not quite

We are the unusual suspects, we stick out like a sore thumb Hey, you don't have to change if you don't wanna fight For all the misfits that are losing their juice

We are the stars, we are the charge We are the ones we've been waiting for We are the ones that make the ground shake

We are the ones, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Raise your glass up, 'cause tonight we're gonna let it go Raise your glass up, everybody's got their faults

Raise your glass up, we can't let our pride get in the way Raise your glass up, oh, we're broken but we're making our way We are the legends, we are the myths

We are the ones that light the sky We are the ones that won't say goodbye We are the ones, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Here's the second chorus repeated, then the bridge: We are the champions, no, not quite We are the unusual suspects, we stick out like a sore thumb

Hey, you don't have to change if you don't wanna fight For all the misfits that are losing their juice That's the complete version. A lot of lyric sites swap "suspects" for something else or drop the "no, not quite" line entirely, which throws off anyone actually trying to sing along properly.

I ran into this problem once when I was organizing a karaoke night and someone had downloaded a version of the backing track that had auto-tuned and slightly rearranged the vocal phrasing. The crowd kept singing the wrong words from the bad source. I had to cross-reference three different official lyric databases before I found one that matched the actual studio release. Took about twenty minutes of tedious comparison work. The workaround was just pulling the lyric PDF directly from the music publisher's site instead of relying on fan-generated content. The common mistake people make is assuming the chorus comes after the first verse. It doesn't. The structure is verse, pre-chorus, chorus, then a bridge section that reuses the opening thematic material before the final chorus blast. If you're learning this for a performance or presentation, memorize the sequence in order rather than jumping around. People who try to learn it out of order tend to freeze mid-song because they lose their place in the timeline. Another thing that trips people up: the line "we are the ones we've been waiting for" is often misheard as "we are the ones that we've been waiting for." It's just "we are the ones we've been waiting for." Drop the second "that." Same with "we stick out like a sore thumb" — some versions say "thumbs," which is wrong. Singular, not plural.

If you're looking for an official source, the lyrics are published through Universal Music Publishing Group. Licensed lyric sites will carry the authorized text. Anything else is someone's best guess and may contain errors that compound over time as other sites copy from each other without checking. The song runs about three minutes and thirty seconds. The bridge section at the end where Gaga builds back up to the final chorus is where most amateur singers hit their hardest notes, so if you're preparing to perform it, practice that transition separately. It's the part that breaks people who haven't worked on their vocal control. I'd suggest spending fifteen minutes drilling just the bridge-to-chorus segment until it feels natural rather than trying to run through the whole thing repeatedly and hoping it clicks. Some live performances vary the bridge slightly, which is normal for pop songs at this level. The studio version is the reference point everyone should learn from, even if the artist changes things for a concert. Otherwise you end up confused about which melody belongs where.