The Trees, by Pulp
A lesson in good lyrics. Or at least, rather amusing lyrics.
Who cares about lyrics in a song anyway?
Certainly not most people.
Whatever
So said Aerasio at 13:54
Thursday, March 8
A lesson in good lyrics. Or at least, rather amusing lyrics.
Who cares about lyrics in a song anyway?
Certainly not most people.
Whatever
4 Comments:
Good lyrics cannot just be good prose, or good poetry - the music and lyrics must complement each other in a combination that stuns the listener.
If the lyrics are being ignored, that means it's not harmonious enough with the music, if both are well combined, both should be unignorable.
your words are reasonable enough. Yet I don't think they do music justice. It's very hard to ascribe these rules to all music. There are definitely pieces of music which lack good words or perhaps lack words at all and yet still move the listener to tears. There are also songs of wit and clever devising that may not be the most musically brilliant pieces of music ever written but still succeed in provoking thought and interest.
In short, I would be more cautious in applying some kind of 'hard and fast' rule to music.
also, doesn't that assume that the listener is the true judge of what is good or not? Perhaps even the measure of all things? That since some are stunned and some are not, good lyrics (which aren't just lyrics) are never really good, but rather only good to particular listeners and not others. Moreover, something can then be a good lyric one day and be rubbish the next depending on whether listeners remain astounded. I reject this implicit premise! It makes life very arbitrary, and I suspect it fails to capture (and must deny) reality. :D
In short, I would refuse to see things in this way at all.
Well, technically music is just another form of rhetoric, another form of argument.
Classical music, both European and Chinese, doesn't rely on lyrics at all, and yet they can be poignant. Then you have opera, both European and Chinese.
Greek poetry often was half-sung and half-read - they were really intertwined and no real distinction was made between song and poetry.
There's the beat-heavy chants of West Africa, which lo and behold found their way through the slaves into jazz, then swing, rock, pop music and hip-hop. I'm in fact an enthusiastic French rap listener (qui faut le droit / la justice pourquoi / la justice nique sa mere / le dernier juge que j'ai vu / avait plus de vice / que le dealeur de ma rue).
But the original complaint "not a lot of people appreciate good lyrics" nowadays was a bit unjustified I think. If I packaged a PhD thesis into a song, despite how profound it would be, it would probably fail to take off.
Music is all about argument, rhetoric and delivery. Lyrics are like a form of content in an argument - they need a good delivery platform to reach their audience. Sometimes it is Berber beats of North Africa, as found in French rap, or sometimes it is substantially more orchestral. Sometimes no words are needed at all - since one can deliver a poignant argument through a propaganda poster for example.
But if lyrics fail to be appreciated, in my opinion, one of the possible faults can be the audience. But it could also be just the way they are delivered.
I love MC Solaar for example, because as a philosophy graduate who happened to enter the French rap scene, one's thoughts aren't "wah! how cheem!" (which is usually a sign of disjunction with the audience) but a delivery that goes down like hot tea.
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