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Underground > Radio & Music >

Good lyrics

  
 
P. Horus Rhacoid
19:35 / 20.07.05
While great lyrics certainly aren’t a necessity for me, most of my favorite bands do write excellent lyrics. Nick Cave, The The, early Weezer, Mission of Burma to a lesser extent… they have the ability to make me turn my head and say ‘wow’ to myself, and I certainly like them more because of that.

At the same time, if a band has particularly bad lyrics, it turns me way off. The best example of this I can think of is Weezer’s new album Make Believe. Both the Blue Album and Pinkerton, I thought, had great lyrics. “Falling For You” off Pinkerton is one of my favorite songs, largely for phrases like ‘holy sweet goddamn.’ Make Believe, by contrast, has shit lyrics- for example: “I apologize to you/ and to anyone else that I hurt too/ I may not be a perfect soul/ but I can learn self-control.” Or, “You’re my best friend/ and I love you/ and I love you/ yes it’s true.” Weezer’s lyrics have always been pretty evocative for me, and the new ones seem dead. I don’t think the music on the album is appreciably worse than any of their other albums- though it doesn’t do anything new, really. But the biggest strike against Make Believe, for me, was the lyrics; and that Rivers, in the past, has written things a hundred times better.

I have the same problem with a lot of hip hop, and I think it’s exacerbated because the focus is on the words. When the lyrics are great, the song works for me. When they’re not, I can’t listen to it- Guru’s Jazzmatazz comes to mind here. I love the idea of mixing hip hop and jazz, and the jazz on the album was good, but the rapping didn’t do anything for me.

I went on a kick last winter of listening to bands that rap in languages other than English; predominantly French and German, but a pretty wide range of other languages too. I found I enjoyed these a lot more than I usually enjoy hip hop- because I couldn’t understand what they were saying (though I could occasionally get some meaning, which actually made things more interesting), it became solely about the sounds of the words and how they meshed with the music. With all meaning taken away, the experience was actually made much better.

I think the clarity with which the words are sung makes a big difference, too. Now that I think about it, it’s very easy to understand Nick Cave or Matt Johnson, and because of that their lyrics take on more importance. Tom Verlaine sings a lot less clearly, and so I don’t pay attention to Television’s lyrics as much (though I do still think they’re good, when I do pay attention to them).

So anyway, sorry for rambling. I guess what I’m asking is, how important are lyrics to other people here?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
20:30 / 20.07.05
Well first of all, I don't think there is any reliable standard measure of "Good" or "Bad" lyrics. What we like we like, what we don't, we don't. It all depends on your life experience up to the point of hearing the lyrics.

I'd like to try another way of looking at it: in terms of Originality. It's an over (and often wrongly) used word, but I think it's what counts. Good art is that which breaks cliches, isn't it?

Which means that while anyone could hear a song and say "Good lyrics" or "Bad lyrics" and it be essentially meaningless beyond them because it's so personal, I think you can objectively respect, say, Public Enemy and David Bowie both, in the as much as they break from the societal norm lyrically, either in agressive racial confrontations/discussions or in suggestions of gender uncertainty (etc, both are a lot more complex than this). Perhaps?

However, if we're going to talk about our own taste in lyrics, a personal bugbear of mine is lyrics that suffer from Coldplay syndrome; that is, a lot of undeveloped ideas that are interesting but never go anywhere. Of course this isn't only present in Coldplay, but here's an example:

Look up, I look up at night,
Planets are moving at the speed of light.
Climb up, up in the trees,
every chance that you get,
is a chance you seize.
How long am I gonna stand,
with my head stuck under the sand?
I'll start before I can stop,
before I see things the right way up.

Wait, what about those stars? And the trees? And the sand? They only seem to last for a line or two each. You could get a whole song out of trees, surely? Or a whole song about having your head under the sand. The song Speed Of Sound from which this verse comes hardly mentions speed at all. The song isn't about the speed of sound, really, is it?

Another personal issue. Just the general lack of definition:

How long before I get in?
Before it starts, before I begin?
How long before you decide?
Before I know what it feels like?
Where To, where do I go?
If you never try, then you'll never know.
How long do I have to climb,
Up on the side of this mountain of mine?

What is "it"? What is the other person "deciding"? Before who knows what what feels like?

Of course, what I see as a lack of definition could be seen as a having a very wide point of view. We're also looking at this song without the music; perhaps the music develops the phrases.

Okay, now for something I do like:

Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God's love be with you

Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five,
Four, Three, Two, One, Liftoff

This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare
(...)

Space Oddity, by Bowie. Good things: the fact it plays with the phrase "Space Oddysey". The fact that it references a stereotypical british character a but like Dan Dare, a male archetype who Bowie would have grown up with, but turns him into Major Tom, creating a new identity or character we can have feelings about. The fact that it references science fiction and fact in the countdown sequence, making it relevant to the time. Basically the fact that it sticks to a subject no-one else has ever really sung pop songs about and goes through it in detail.

Am I agreed with?
 
 
P. Horus Rhacoid
21:36 / 20.07.05
Well first of all, I don't think there is any reliable standard measure of "Good" or "Bad" lyrics. What we like we like, what we don't, we don't. It all depends on your life experience up to the point of hearing the lyrics.

No arguments from me here. I didn’t mean to imply that there was any real objective standard of measuring how good lyrics are; when I was slinging around words like ‘good’ and ‘great’ I meant in a relative sense (i.e., my opinion of their quality) but I didn’t make it too clear.

In terms of my personal taste, multi-dimensional lyrics, especially songs that include imagery in support of an overarching idea, tend to be the ones I like best. I love Matt Johnson’s lyrics because he uses a lot of very vivid, evocative imagery. Take the line: But as silent as the car lights that move across this room/ as cold as our bodies silhouetted by the moon from Kingdom of Rain. I think this is a great line for a lot of reasons: it evokes a pair of clear images that are beautiful in their own right, in support of the overarching theme of the song (an emotionally dead relationship). It also taps into experiences from my life– I grew up living on a busy street, so I know exactly the way car headlights come in a window and move across the wall. It’s something I’ve always found particularly beautiful. Even though these two images aren’t addressed again in the song, though, I don’t think it’s a victim of ‘Coldplay syndrome’– both images are presented in their entirety, and they both support something specific.

As for Make Believe, I think the reason why I dislike the lyrics so much has to do with a lack of depth. A line like You’re my best friend/ and I love you etc. etc. exists only on one level, at least for me. It doesn’t bring anything to mind because he’s just saying what he thinks. I think it’s a case of telling versus showing. I like lyrics that show, which is probably a symptom of the way I tend to treat songs as stories. In fact, my treatment of songs as stories also is a reason why my reaction to lyrics is such an important factor in how much I like a song– the music gives the broad strokes of the story, while the lyrics themselves do the actual telling. If it isn't told well, I'm not going to want to listen to it.
 
  
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