…or, as musicologists call them, “lyrics”.
For the longest time, I’ve detested song lyrics. I don’t mean specific lyrics, necessarily (although whoever penned the words in most Streisand songs deserves their own special circle of Hell), but all lyrics.
That’s because I love music, and lyrics are just a distraction from the art form. It’s why the great paintings don’t contain expository words or speech bubbles — just a simple title suffices — and classical sculptures aren’t tattooed (although it’s only a question of time before they are, and I’m hoping that this can wait until after I’m dead).
Seriously: somebody please enlighten me as to how Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, for instance, would be improved by a male or female warbler spouting some execrable nonsense over Ludwig’s deathless piano.
And as a one-time chorister, I have to make an exception for some (but not all) sacred music, e.g. Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus or Fauré’s Agnus Dei. And even then, using the latter as an example, it’s the same three lines repeated ad nauseam anyway.
I have a special room of hatred in my heart for opera, because not only are the lyrics generally trite and awful, but unless you’re fluent in German and/or Italian, 90% of the art form is completely incomprehensible anyway.
“But the voice is just another instrument!”
My point exactly. There’s nothing wrong with the singing; it’s when you add words that the whole thing falls apart.
I also make exception when the lyrics are satirical or humorous — when the music’s job is just to make the words memorable by the addition of a melody. A fine example of this is to be found in the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, e.g.:
For as a general rule we know / Two strings go to every bow;
Make up your mind what grief will bring / When you have two bows to every string!
No greater argument against bigamy was ever written.
Don’t get me started on modern music. Take for example CSN’s Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, a love song supposedly written about Judy Collins — who ended up bedding two-thirds of the trio, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the young houri bonked David Crosby as well (because it was the late 1960s). The song is brilliant, the harmonies, well, CSN; but the lyrics?
Friday evening / Sunday in the afternoon;
What have you got to lose?
Will you come see me / Thursday or Saturday?
What have I got to lose?
As sung by the boys, the lyrics sound wonderful; but they’re incomprehensible rubbish.
Which brings me to Steely Dan. As Longtime Readers know, I have no equal when it comes to admiration for the works of Messrs. Fagen and Becker. Complex music, wonderfully arranged and played: Beethoven would definitely approve. Now try and make sense of their lyrics.
While the music played you worked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights
You were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That’s when you turned the world around
…and Kid Charlemagne was one of their more comprehensible efforts.
But the greatest example of bullshit lyrics were undoubtedly the prog-rock Yes.
Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face
Caesar’s palace, morning glory, silly human race
On the sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place
If the summer changed to winter, yours is no disgrace
The best part is that Jon Anderson admitted many years later that the lyrics actually had no meaning; he chose the words simply because of their sound and their scanning value to the music. Which made me chortle out loud, because almost as many analytical pages had been penned by poseur “musicologists” attempting to divine some kind of meaning to Yours Is No Disgrace as had been written by English literary poseurs attempting to do the same with the beaded curtain in Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants. Same purpose, same foolishness.
No; if you’re going to have lyrics in your song, make them throwaway stuff, e.g. Volman and Kaylan’s Elenore:
Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera…
Et cetera? [snork]
I could go on all day about this stuff, but let me finish with something a little less tongue-in-cheek. Here’s Ralph McTell’s Streets Of London:
Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper
With his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride
And held loosely at his side
Yesterday’s paper telling yesterday’s news
So how can you tell me you’re lonely
And say for you that the sun don’t shine?
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
Show you something to make you change your mind
Have you seen the old girl
Who walks the streets of London
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She’s no time for talking
She just keeps right on walking
Carrying her home in two carrier bags
So how can you tell me you’re lonely
And say for you that the sun don’t shine?
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
I’ll show you something to make you change your mind
In the all night cafe
At a quarter past eleven
Same old man sitting there on his own
Looking at the world
Over the rim of his teacup
Each tea lasts an hour
And he wanders home alone
So how can you tell me you’re lonely
Don’t say for you that the sun don’t shine
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
I’ll show you something to make you change your mind
Have you seen the old man
Outside the Seaman’s Mission
Memory fading with the medal ribbons that he wears
In our winter city
The rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn’t care
So how can you tell me you’re lonely
And say for you that the sun don’t shine?
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
I’ll show you something that’ll make you change your mind.
Not lyrics: poetry. Shakespeare would approve.
Ouch. Streets of London is indeed poetry, and some of the saddest, most poignant and moving sort from my childhood. It must be allergy season in here.
TNX 4 bringing it up – Streets of London
personally I find 2 covers better than the original:
Tony Rice and Blackmore’s Night
I find I must disagree about “opera”
my folks took me with them to “The Opera” in 1945 to Atlantic City: I was all of 4 yrs old and I sat there, quiet as a mouse, completely entranced – way long past my bedtime; it was Carmen.
my Dad was a polyglot and followed story line easily; I just listened to the music (singing); my severe myopia hadn’t yet been discovered – and besides which, even on my Dad’s lap, I couldn’t see over the person in front of me
in later years I realized that opera is just a play with the lines sung to music; the acting/singing could be just as good/bad as the performers in either situation, though I agree, fluency inthe original language is a big help
Yikes, I partially agree, as I don’t care about lyrics 99% of the time, but I come down very differently. The voice is an instrument and if the song is good, you don’t have to understand the lyrics to appreciate it. So yeah, O don’t understand most opera lyrics, but I love it as music.
Oh, and Steely Dan sucks. I cannot listen to their boring/trite music.
That’s a yes and no to me. Sometimes the music is a vehicle for the words. For example, I think the March of Cambreadth would not be nearly as entertaining without the lyrics. OTOH, in much of contemporary music — going back to the 1960s at least — the words are nearly incomprehensible without some serious concentration.
Mr. du Toit:
I’ll disagree rather vehemently with you on this subject. For me, the lyrics are often just as important as the music and form an important part of it when well sung. My favorite musical genre is the “Elizabethan Boogie” era of the late 60’s early 70’s, including Fairport Convention (with Sandy Denny’s beautiful voice), Steeleye Span (ditto for Maddy Prior), and Jethro Tull (with Ian Anderson’s once-unique voice).
The Tull lyrics in particular were pure poetry put to music, and often overlooked. Even the later of Ian’s best writing was wonderful in itself, as in “Dun Ringill” from the Stormwatch album:
“We’ll wait in stone circles ’till the force comes through
Lines join in faint discord, and the stormwatch brews
A concert of kings as the white sea *snaps*
At the heels of a soft prayer…whispered.”
(Putting those last three lines of lyrics in the voice of the BBC weather announcer at the start of the tune is also a stroke of genius. You should hit Google Maps, type in “Dun Ringill” to see where it is…and then widen out going to the west and find the little creek with the Kilmarie Cemetery across the road…and the house just to the north of the cemetery is where Ian and his family lived in that time when he was the Laird of Strathaird.)
Didn’t look ’em up, that’s just from memory. Because I remember the lyrics of damned near EVERY tune on their albums from 1968 (“This Was”) through 1979 (“Stormwatch”).
Or Maddy Prior’s “Rollercoaster” from the “Woman in the Wings” album:
“Singing for supper ’round the world, I’ve laughed in the afternoon
I have danced after the pubs have closed, by the bandstand under the moon
I’ve been drunk…and I’ve been sober, I’ve been happy and I’ve been sad
But there never was a tour…like the one we just had.
(Chorus)
And the rollercoaster rolls ’round,
we all know it’s slow going up
But just watch how fast it comes down.”
Just reading those lyrics puts them to the music…they’re basically inseparable for me.
The problem — although I do agree with much of what you say — is that the (excellent) examples you give are appallingly in the minority of the total musical output.
And I haven’t even begun to talk about that rap shit.
[insert “overly manly man” meme]
“Rap music”? You mean “Retards Attempting Poetry”?
Steve Allen used to do a hysterical bit on the Tonight Show where he’d read pop lyrics as poetry. There are exceptions though, as you’ve pointed out. Joni Mitchell’s Amelia qualifies, IMO.
I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
Like the hexagram of the heavens
Like the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
The drone of flying engines is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets through to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Full of picture post card charms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
People will tell you where they’ve gone
They’ll tell you where to go
But ’til you get there yourself, you never really know
And where some have found their paradise
Others just come to harm
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I wish that he was here tonight
It’s so hard to obey his sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads, cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm
The ghost of aviation, she was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me, she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending on beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
Maybe I’ve never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes
And looking down on everything, I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel to shower off the dust
And I slept on strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s, over geometric farms
Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms
I seem to remember an old post of yours praising The Cruxshadows Winterborn. Was it the lyrics, the music or both? (Note: I like it and for me it is both.)
I think you are confusing me with some other writer. I have never heard of The Cruxshadows (although the name is excellent).
I shall rectify the situation toot sweet. Thankee.
My memory may be failing (I’m close to a decade senior to you) and it was a while ago (maybe 2004 or there about). As my (possibly faulty) memory serves, you’d been talking about your time in a band, styles of music and spoke positively of this band & song. I looked it up, listened and got the MP3. It is virtually the most modern song I have on my computer and I’ve always attributed it to your recommendation.
If I’m wrong, so be it. Sorry.
I’m in full agreement with you regarding the lyrics of Yes, which I always thought were complete trash, words slapped down in order to make a rhyme and nothing else.
Another example is the the anointed. Bob Dylan. See the lyrics in “Ballad of a thin man”, alternate title “I’m cool and you’re not”.
Jethro Tull’s “Mother Goose”: beautiful tune, beautifully performed, schizophrenic lyrics. I never could bring myself to buy any of Tull’s albums. No offense intended to the taste of the poster above.
Funny. Your last note (pun int) put me in mind of a claim David Crosby made for the Byrds. He said in an interview, “We were getting good poetry on the radio.” Like most of the elder boomers, a bit self-important.
Kim, I have no bone to pick with sacred music, having listened to mostly hymns from church when I attend, but I agree with you completely on everything else you say about lyrics. Now I finally understand why you like Steely Dan – it’s NOT the lyrics of their songs, which ARE incomprehensible. But I do find it impossible to seperate their music from their lyrics.
Nearly the entire oevre of the Rolling Stones and The Who have incomprehensible lyrics. Hit songs like Bohemain Rhapsody by Queen is musicaly and lyricly all over the place, and although Don McLean has said more than a few times that he’d explain the lyrics to American Pie, he never has and I don’t think he can, because he’ll have to admit he was high at the time an it really is a stupid song having nothing to do with the night Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson died. I could go on, but it’s your blog, not mine.
Maybe I’ll go off and find one of those sites that strip the words out of songs and listen to what’s left of Steely Dan…
Rant away, Brother Andrew. Long expositions are always welcome here, because then I don’t have to write them.
#LazyAss
There ARE exceptions, which are poetry on their own, enhanced by the music.
Older example: Men of Harlech c.1830
Hark! I hear the foe advancing,
Barbed steeds are proudly prancing,
Helmets in the sunbeams glancing
Glitter through the trees.
Men of Harlech, lie ye dreaming?
See ye not their falchions gleaming,
While their pennons gaily streaming
Flutter in the breeze?
Hark! I hear the foe advancing,
Barbed steeds are proudly prancing,
Helmets in the sunbeams glancing
Glitter through the trees.
Men of Harlech, lie ye dreaming?
See ye not their falchions gleaming,
While their pennons gaily streaming
Flutter in the breeze?
Or the special version used in Zulu:
Men of Harlech stop your grieving
Can’t you see their spear points gleaming..
Newer example: Unchained Melody 1954
Oh my love, my darling
I hunger for your touch
This long lonely time.
Time goes by so slowly
And time can mean so much.
Supreme example:
…Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land for the free and the home of the brave?
No. Good lyrics, which are few and far between I agree, are inseparable from the accompanying music. They have even been know to move me to tears.
Like “Empty chairs” by Don McLean, released just after a girl I loved achingly revealed she would never be mine.
I feel the trembling tingle of a sleepless night
Creep through my fingers ere the moon is bright
Beams of blue come flickering through my windowpane
Like Gypsy moths that dance around a candle flame
And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you’d go
Until you did, I never thought you would
Moonlight used to bathe the contours of your face
While chestnut hair fell all around the pillowcase
And the fragrance of your flowers rests beneath my head
A sympathy bouquet left with a love that’s dead
And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you’d go
Until you did, I never thought you would
Never thought the words you said were true
Never thought you said just what you meant
Never knew how much I needed you
Never thought you’d leave, until you went
Morning comes and morning goes with no regret
The evening brings the memories I can’t forget
Empty rooms that echo as I climb the stairs
And empty clothes that drape and fall on empty chairs
And I wonder if you know
That I never understood
That although you said you’d go
Until you did, I never thought you would
And sometimes, you find the melody, the lyrics AND the images create a whole greater than the parts:
Wendy Matthews, “The day you went away”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i6ZfUhTjws
a)
2009 or thereabouts, Saturday evening.
Roseville, California.
Borders Book Sellers.
.
A young lady (from Modesto?, a couple hours south) (with the most impressive hair in the known universe) played guitar and sang.
One number was that 1984 Hallelujah song by Cohen.
Listening, I thought it was unintelligible gibberish, the lyrics merely inserted to fill four stanzas, the required four minutes for commercial radio.
.
.
b)
Martyn Jerel Buchwald — street-name ‘Marty Balin’ — said he wrote COMING BACK TO ME in ten minutes.
I think he had divine assistance:
https://youtu.be/z5YQ3jQt3-c?si=NHzO3a4WnSnyBZ7A
.
The summer inhaled
And held its breath too long.
The winter looked the same,
As if it never was gone,
And through an open window,
Where no curtain hung,
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
One begins to read between
The pages of a look.
The sound of sleepy music,
And suddenly, you’re hooked.
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
You came to stay and live my way,
Scatter my love like leaves in the wind.
You always say you won’t go away,
But I know what it always has been,
It always has been.
A transparent dream
Beneath an occasional sigh…
Most of the time,
I just let it go by.
Now I wish it hadn’t begun.
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
Strolling the hill,
Overlooking the shore,
I realize I’ve been here before.
The shadow in the mist
Could have been anyone –
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
Small things like reasons
Are put in a jar.
Whatever happened to wishes,
Wished on a star?
Was it just something
I made up for fun?
I saw you, I saw you,
Coming back to me.
.
.
c)
[submitted without comment]
Jamey Johnson — IN COLOR:
https://youtu.be/EYGwxf1gCC4?si=im1VTbQ3I7-IrMyi
I am for whatever reason drawn to songs with lyrics of pain and sorrow and regret; they often convey the complexities of life. A perfect example is Lyle Lovett’s “She’s Already Made Up Her Mind.” The lines about talking (and not talking) at the kitchen table hit hard.
She said something about going home
She said something about needing to spend some time alone
And she wondered out loud what it was she had to find
But she’s already made up her mind
All my friends told me she was too young
Well I knew that myself and I tried to run
But the faster I ran the more I fell behind
Because she’d already made up her mind
She’s already made up her mind
Now there is nothing so deep as the ocean
And there is nothing so high as the sky
And there is nothing so unwavering as a woman
When she’s already made up her mind
So now she’s sitting at one end of the kitchen table
And she is staring without an expression
And she is talking to me without moving her eyes
Because she’s already made up her mind
She’s already made up her mind
She’s already made up her mind
And she said something about going home
And she said something about needing to spend some time alone
And she wondered out loud what it was she had to find
But she’d already made up her mind
So my friend carry me down to the water’s edge
And then sail with me out to that ocean deep
And let me go easy down over the side
And remember me to her
She’s already made up her mind
She’s already made up her mind
She’s already made up her mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmjYJy5CIM4
One of my room-mates in the Marine Corps was “dancing” to “Beds are Burning” by wassisname when he started listening to the music…then stopped dancing and walked off the dance floor. “No one should dance to that song. It’s not a dancing song”.
Well looks like you struck a nerve on the question of lyrics..
Country western songs /lyrics tell stories and about the human condition
Listen to these two and tell me that the lyrics don’t matter
Dirt Cheap…Cody Johnson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdVN4ZiJUTE
Where have you been ..Kath Mattea….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl5Uog-MDGo
Mine host, I must disagree to a certain — and admittedly limited — extent. American Blues, as an example, is a genre that evolved primarily to tell a story. Without the lyrics, the tale can’t be told. There are many excellent instrumental blues charts of course, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. That’s certainly not to claim that the good blues musicians’ instrumentals aren’t highly evolved, however. See Jeff Healey, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Sonny Landreth, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Cephas & Wiggins, Johnny Winter, et.al.
Agreed that is rare to find both good music and good lyrics in the same song.
I tried my hand at song writing some 40 odd years ago when I lived in Key West and after I’d had too much tequila and Jimmy Buffett at the same time. The emotions that poured out of my tortured soul included such titles as:
“You Can’t Get Over Him (Til You Get Under Me)” and
“How Can I Love You (If You Won’t Lie Down)”
Mostly not a fan, especially of opera, country music made after 1970, and pop R&B of any era. I do love listening to prog rock lyrics that I can actually understand (e.g., Jethro Tull, Genesis (Selling England by the Pound) and Procol Harum). Much of what makes Rush enjoyable to my ear is the lyrics.
Still, the groove is the thing. Everything else is mostly clutter. Take Five and Green Onions are still enjoyable after 6 decades or more.
Some tunes would just be destroyed with lyrics. One example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwDOa-lvizM