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As a kid I was very into the Beatles and watched Help! and A Hard Day's Night obsessively, which may be part of why I almost never listen to them as an adult.

My favorite Beatles song at this point is "With a Little Help From My Friends," which I didn't appreciate at all as a kid.

that's funny, because I would include that in the "borderline kids' songs" category of the Beatles oeuvre

As a kid I despised all songs that seemed like kids' songs. I didn't want to be condescended to.

As a kid, I loved the first LP of the blue album, but thought of the second LP (White Album and later) as a "grown-up" record.

kids love to get high with their friends, it's true

Yeah I don't think I saw that one as a kid's song, I think I just thought of it as a joke song. Now I find the call-and-response vocals really cool.

It's more the sing-songy melody of the verses especially, and the fact that it's a song about friends. Anyway, before a certain age lyrics about getting high don't code as anything to kids

I had no idea people paid attention to Led Zeppelin's lyrics tbh.

It isn't advisable.

One of their biggest strengths was Plant's mushmouthedness.

The Beatles definitely felt very kid-friendly when I was a kid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjdiXNBK934

i believe Raffi also does a rippin Octopus' Garden

to me a lot of the brilliance of the Sgt. Pepper tunes is exactly that they all have this dual meaning where they describe somewhat fun yet mundane events that most people can relate to and enjoy and feel safe with, while implying that it's all coded talk for hippie shenanigans.

hippie shenanigans like beating your woman and keeping her apart from the things that she loved?

man he was mean but he's changing his scene and he's doing the best that he can, guys

actually, in all seriousness, i agree with you, Moodles -- I definitely remember putting Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in that kid song-like box as a kid, probably because it was in the movie Yellow Submarine. So that one definitely fits

Re Robert Plant: "Carouselambra" is a great lyric in the Jon Anderson mode.

i think the psychedelia and the childlike imagery is all part of the same thing. hallucinogens often pull you back into childhood, sometimes in sickly and upsetting ways. this is true also of these types of songs.

otm

I had no idea people paid attention to Led Zeppelin's lyrics tbh.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Wednesday, June 30, 2021 11:53 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It isn't advisable.

― I Scream For Ice Cream But Also Just All The Time And For No Reason (Old Lunch), Wednesday, June 30, 2021 11:54 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

When I was a teenager, Led Zeppelin and Nine Inch Nails are the bands that made me realize that it is almost always a mistake to pay attention to the lyrics of a song I like

it is weird that so much of the beatles music evokes this particular feeling. it's weird to me, anyway, because this is the most popular music ever recorded and it is linked to this romanticized moment of liberation and rebellion.

Everyone thinks the 70s prog era is full of "English Tolkien/orc bullshit"

Yeah, where does this come from? I imagine that it is based entirely on the Led Zeppelin songs that sound a bit like they could be Jethro Tull songs?

Anyway, since I've been made to read this thread revive: Ringo songs are mostly goofy filler that I skip as often as not. "Piggies" or "Rocky Raccoon" are doing something else entirely - more like parodic pomo cultural commentary. McCartney presumably wrote 'old-timey' songs because he liked pre-rock songwriting. "When I'm 64" is brilliant and says more to me than most pop songs about staying together; remarkably insightful coming from someone still in his 20s. I dispute the ideas that i) the Beatles were writing music for adults per se ii) it would have been mature to write songs about dating people than to write any of these.

load of xps treeship is actually doing a good job of exploring reasons why the Beatles were great, for someone who dislikes them.

the best nirvana lyrics are generally the ones you can hear, i regret looking up most of the others. zeppelin is in a whole different category though, casual sexism & stolen blues lines aside the tolkien stuff is particularly unforgivable. even if i liked tolkien it would embarrass me

a lot of the beatles stuff does feel like children's music just because of when i heard it & i don't have much more interest in revisiting it than i do "the wheels on the bus". it's impossible for me to hear sgt pepper as revolutionary regardless of how it felt at the time (but it also appealed to some older people who didn't generally like longhair music? either bc of its relative inclusivity of older generations & nods to their music or bc of its art-music trappings or both? for whatever reason it has/had a generational reach in both directions way beyond its contemporaries)

someone could prob make an argument for yellow submarine as pomo commentary too, just bc of its context as well as its execution

Oh, I def think all the toyshops and candy apples stuff was rebellious for the time, it was something the stern and straight laced adult world disapproved of. xxxp

Yeah, I don't disagree; it's mainly the (imo) crudeness of Ringo's songwriting and singing that leads me to skip those songs tbh. The film is amazing iirc.xp

Zeppelin's "Tolkien stuff" is literally a handful of lines in a total of three songs of all the songs they did and people act like they did LoTR concept albums

I think the broadness of its appeal is part of its greatness. They found a way to talk about contemporary topics that felt inclusive to both hipsters and squares, where a lot of their peers made music that felt more oppositional and closed off.

xp to Left

Make up my mind to make a new start
Walking into Mordor with the one ring
'Gainst my heart

i listened to their first 5 albums several times each & the tolkien stuff is all i remember apart from the (stolen) lemon line

shit was ubiquitous in all music, remember "Betcha By Gollum Wow"?

ramble on
misty mountain hop
battle of evermore

that's it iirc

so you only listened to II and IV I guess

no i heard the shitty reggae song too

leonard nimoy did it better anyway

tolkien i mean not reggae

What are some Led Zeppilin songs? I think “Immigrant Song” might be the only one I’ve heard, via the rathergood dot com animation for it

i think Stairway's 'mystical' lyrics and the gargantuan shadow that song casts, and the bombastic bands they influenced years later has people retroactively remembering much more fantasy-styled lyrics a la Tolkien than were actually there.

hell, what about the damn love songs

"Since I've Been Loving You" is my personal fav but i'm sure I'm alone on that

"when the curtain falls" is a good one

Zeppelin's "Tolkien stuff" is literally a handful of lines in a total of three songs of all the songs they did and people act like they did LoTR concept albums

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download)

Like it's totally normal or reasonable to devote multiple lines across *three* songs to your Tolkien/orc bullshit fixation.

Silby, check out "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers".

I probably won’t tbqh my current project is getting into the contemporary emo revival, thanks brad

Anyway the main one i was thinking of is Camel (Nimrodel/procession/the white rider) xxp

I can only think of a few others with specific, direct Tolkien references tbf, but more vaguely Tolkien-inspired nonsense is more common.

And Rick Wakeman did a LOTR concept album eventually.

p sure Genesis *did* go there, in at least 1 song

"I Can't Dance"

Zeppelin's "Tolkien stuff" is literally a handful of lines in a total of three songs of all the songs they did and people act like they did LoTR concept albums

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download)

Like it's totally normal or reasonable to devote multiple lines across *three* songs to your Tolkien/orc bullshit fixation.

― Fauna Sukkot (Deflatormouse), Wednesday, June 30, 2021 11:48 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no it's too cool to be normal

did rush do any tolkien shit, it would fit my stereotype of them

Yes, they did.