friday poll

[lauralh]

[Poll #727548]

Comments

If the music is good, the lyrics don't matter.

[perich.livejournal.com]

"Somebody told me that you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year."

[skipbreakfast.livejournal.com]

What about bad lyrics which are so obvious that they overwhelm the good music?

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

D

[gikiski.livejournal.com]

Rush is an example of C) for me. Although I've come to really enjoying their music too, the music wasn't what drew me in.

And Suicide is Painless (M.A.S.H. theme music) is a perfect example of A). I hated learning it had lyrics much less what they turned out to be.

Wow, I sound like I actually know what I'm talking about ...

[wurmwyd.livejournal.com]

Hi there!

Cases in point: (points? Case in points? Cases in points? hrmmm)

Springsteen's Backstreets:
Music: C, E^m D|G, C, E^m D|G. Pretty simple, really. I could probably play this, and I totally suck at guitar.
Lyrics: (forget the music, read this like it's a poem) "Endless juke joints and Valentino drag. Where dancers scrape the tears up off the streets dressed down in rags. Running into the darkness, some hurt bad, some really dyin'. But at night sometimes it seemed you could hear the whole damn city cryin'. Blame it on the lies that killed us, blame it on the truth that ran us down. You can blame it all on me Terri, It don't matter to me now. When the breakdown hit at midnight there was nothing left to say but I hated him and I hated you when you went away...".

Pure poetry. Sure, it's in the common American vernacular of today, but that just makes it flow all the more sweetly.

Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile (extended Electric Ladyland edition)
Music: Um ... it's fucking Hendrix. I can't posibly be expected to transcribe this...
Lyrics: "Well my arrows are made of desire, from far away as Jupiters sulphur mines. Say my arrows are made of desire, desire, from far away as Jupiters sulphur mines
(Way down by the Methane Sea, yeah) I have a humming bird and it hums so loud, you think you were losing your mind, hmmm..."

Jupiter's sulphur mines? Methane seas? Psychologically damaging hummingbirds? Um ... sure, Jimi, whatever you say. But the music, it's goddamn beautiful.

Re: Wow, I sound like I actually know what I'm talking about ...

[chris.livejournal.com]

for blues based-stuff in particular, it seems like lyrics are just there to hold the structure together, and sometimes to tell a clever story, but the real focus is the music. (red house is a prime example, i've heard hendrix never played it the same way twice).

Re: Wow, I sound like I actually know what I'm talking about ...

[wurmwyd.livejournal.com]

Hi there!

Yeah, I just started taking guitar lessons 3 months ago, so now suddenly I think I'm some kind of brilliant musicologist or something. :) So take anything I say with a big grain of salt.

But I've been doing a lot of blues with my music teacher, and the beauty is that it's really simple. A lot of "When I was a young boy... [Grrrrrun-NAH-nuh-NUNH]" type of stuff. Then they repreat the first line again, so that they can think of what rhymes with it for the third line. (Filling in the [Grrrrrun-NAH-nuh-NUNH]s as necessary. (and even the end rhyme is optional)

But the reason that it's so simple, is that it allows for SO MUCH improvisation. Every time Hendrix played Red House, he'd probably already forgotten how he'd played it LAST time. Just as long as he had enough basic structure to make it easily identifiable as "Red House", he could go where ever the hell he wanted with the rest of the song. And with Jimi, there really wasn't anyplace he COULDN'T go. That's what makes it so gorgeous.

Springsteen, on the other hand, just leaves enough basic music for him to hang his lyrics on. He's really just an amazing urban poet, who can strum a few chords. In a lot of his songs, Clarence Clemmons just OWNZ the musical content, Bruce is just providing backup. :)

Re: Wow, I sound like I actually know what I'm talking about ...

[twirlingtulip.livejournal.com]

I totally understand what he is talking about.

Re: Wow, I sound like I actually know what I'm talking about ...

[wurmwyd.livejournal.com]

Hi there

Who?, Springsteen, Hendrix, or me? :D

Re: Wow, I sound like I actually know what I'm talking about ...

[twirlingtulip.livejournal.com]

Hendrix

[hotcrab.livejournal.com]

i slang a gang of dick

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

IN A TRUCK?

[girlstyle.livejournal.com]

Asinine lyrics will make me lose all respect for a song.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

:)

[patrick.livejournal.com]

The thing I hear first is the music. Depending on how complex or interesting the music is, I might never get to the point of listening to the lyrics.

Sometimes, depending on who is singing, the lyrics are the music.

Stupid lyrics never bothered me too much. A good example would be Beck. Nonsensical lyrics over folk guitar, but my god is it fun to listen to.

[toastednut.livejournal.com]

no lyrics, please, or else D.

[faustin.livejournal.com]

It bothers me that I'm sensitive to lyrics.

I've noticed that songs I absolutely love occasionally have pretty negative lyrics... and since lyrics tend to jump into my head, to express feelings I'm not even yet aware that I'm feeling... this matters to me. Left untended (like when I'm running or working out) my mind will play lyrics, and I don't like the negative lyrics running over and over through my head.

eg. Staind, Outside:
"I can see through you
See your true colors
'Cause inside you're ugly
You're ugly like me
I can see through you
See to the real you"

Radiohead - Creep
"but I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin here? I don't belong here"

When I was at wrestling camp, age 15, I got this gift from the fucktards I had to live with. They played this song on endless, merciless loops, until the lyrics were burned permanently into my brain... easy to do, since I'm naturally inclined to lyrics:

"me and my homies like to play this game
some call it amtrak and some call it the train
we'd always line up in a single file line
and take our turns at fucking girls behinds
but every time i'd get up
i'd shit out a lump
because i'd stick my dick in and it would get stuck
the girlie'd say stop
I'd say I'm not
'that's it, I quit, 'cause you're a busting me out"
I'd say, "girlie don't hide it, just divide it,
and please don't knock it until you've tried it!"
so to all of my homies in buffalo
let's have group sex
and do the rambo
if you wanna blow
just let me know
we can go backstage at the end of the show
I will look at you
and you'll look at me
with my dick in my hand
and you fall to your knees
you know what to do, and I won't say please...
Just nibble on my dick, like a rat does cheese!
Everybody say HEY, We want some pussy!"

On that note... adieu

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

omg, the same thing happened to me. Except I was like 11 and it was just one day and one person who didn't realize I didn't understand any of the song at all.

Lyrics definitely affect me, but I find them secondary to the music. The singer's voice, really, is what I care more about than what he says. The lyrics are just fun to sing along to. Once in a while I'll hear a song with such insipid lyrics I can't listen to it (despite the rest of it being enjoyable), but that's really rare.

[faustin.livejournal.com]

The singer's voice is what matters to me, too. Except... I'd expect to be laughed at for some of the maudlin, emo stuff I like. I'll fall for natalie merchant, alana miles, jewel, chris isaak, sarah mclachlan, mostly a lot of female, dramatic singers. But my brain's got a deep, deep lyrics database, so that a lyric will occur to me, and if I think through the entire song, I'll find the significant lines which express EXACTLY an obscure, deep feeling I was having.

[jette.livejournal.com]

Sometimes a good song will allow me to overlook stupid lyrics, but I never not notice.

Other

[realethicalslut.livejournal.com]

I like all kinds of music from ethereal ambient to ridiculously complex avante-garde. As long as I'm getting something positive from the music, I like it. Some music that I like has deliberate gibberish as lyrics like the french band Magma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magma_%28band%29).

Bad lyrics, good music:

Then the sun came up on a sleepy day
And never went down at night
And the crowd kept on singin waste away
But it just didnt feel right
And the prince and the drummer and the fire girls
Couldnt get our guitars in tune
And I knew it was over when the sound man said
"I wish we were still in June"

Spock's Beard - June (http://lyricwiki.org/Spock%27s_Beard:June)

Good music, good lyrics:

Everybody knows that we live in a world where they
give bad names to beautiful things
Everybody knows that we live in a world where we don't
give beautiful things a second glance
Heaven only knows that we live in a world where what
we call beautiful is just something on sale
People laughing behind their hands while the fragile
and the sensitive are given no chance

Marillion - Beautiful (http://lyricwiki.org/Marillion:Beautiful)

Good music, good lyrics, but slightly annoying overall:

Yes, she caught my eye,
As I walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was,
Fucking high,
And I don't think that I'll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

James Blunt - You're Beautiful (http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/James-Blunt/You-re-Beautiful.html)

Cheesy lyrics, cheesy music (but I still love it)

So little time, so many men,
But it never seems enough.
So many people passing by me,
As so few are made out of the right stuff.

There seems to be shortage of heroes.
There ain't enough ones, and too many zeroes.

One, two, three, four, oh-oh-seven.
All the good guys go to heaven.
Five, six, seven, eight.
Hey, hey.
All the rest can go away.

DDR: Ni-Ni - 1234 007 (http://www.lyricsdownload.com/dance-dance-revolution-1234-007-lyrics.html)

Some good lyrics, some good music, disjointed overall:

Really don't mind if you sit this one out.

My words but a whisper -- your deafness a SHOUT.
I may make you feel but I can't make you think.
Your sperm's in the gutter -- your love's in the sink.
So you ride yourselves over the fields and
you make all your animal deals and
your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick.

Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick (http://lyricwiki.org/Jethro_Tull:Thick_As_A_Brick)

Shameless egotistic lyrics, fuckin' awesome remix:

Shining Star for you to see, what your life can truly be.

Yeah, hey

When you wish upon a star
Your dreams will take you very far
When you wish upon a dream, yeah
Life ain't always what it seems, oh yeah
Once you see your light so dear, hey
In the sky so very clear

You're a shining star,
No matter who you are
Shining bright to see
What you can truly be
What you can truly be

Stryper - Shining Star (http://lyricwiki.org/Stryper:Shining_Star)

realethicalslut

Angst sucks

[bewing.livejournal.com]

When you are a kid in an english class, and the teacher tells you that today's assignment will be to write a poem -- the one truly easy thing to plonk down on a piece of paper is angsty crap.

And I am firmly convinced that is why the lyrics of most songs are angsty crap. There are a small percentage of songs that have truly meaningful, nice lyrics. But they are mighty rare. I agree that songwriters can be awesome poets (the Springsteen lyric above really is rather impressive). But songwriters make awful philosophers, in general (the Marillion example above is trite and simplistic -- if well written). Songwriters are godawful when it comes to politics & war; naive, foolish, and idiotic lyrics are everywhere! And kids eat this crap up! Gah!!! And I think all the angst in most of the songs is insincere showy faux angst.

There are a few of these really foolish and stupid songs, that have good music, where I am willing to forgive the stupidity just for the music. But it's hard for me to ignore how stupid the lyrics are.

And do people really need song lyrics in order to put into words a particular emotion they feel? I certainly never did.

I love music. Which is why I've gravitated to New Age. Like toastednut says: no lyrics please. Or at least put them in a language I can't understand. So I don't have to contemplate how idiotic the lyrics are.

[tenfastblood.livejournal.com]

music generally starts for me as an undifferentiated whole. the essence that attracts us permeates the act of creation, and usually can be found to be the same in lyrics and music, unless the two were written separately or by different people.

As I delve deeper into the music I love, generally I find the lyrics to add a level of intrigue and wonder to take me further into something my soul has already told me I love. (subconsciously, it has also heard the lyrics.) Lyrics can sometimes ruin a song for me, but typically that means I am internally conflicted over something.

Just a related note, I hate Coldplay for related reasons. What began as an inexplicable mistrust of just their band name was later confirmed by a visceral reaction against the crystalline unflawedness of their musical creations and, on further inspection, the ultimate shallowness and contrived character of their lyrics. Full of shit or genius: you can read it in the energy that permeates everything a band touches.

[tenfastblood.livejournal.com]

sorry to amend; after reading the posts above, I have to suggest my own candidates for best lyrics:

The Posies,
and
Springsteen's Nebraska album