…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.
