everybody's talkin' - is spoken word a legit new threat in current music?

Hard to gauge interest in this topic, but I was checking out the new Kelly Lee Owens track "Sonic 8" (https://kellyleeowens.bandcamp.com/album/lp-8), where she recites/repeats a few spoken phrases over a more industrial beat than her usual fare with backing vocals muttering harder to discern words. I initially liked the change in style, but the spoken parts are awfully direct. I think at one point the backing voices whisper "anxiety" a few times, which nearly made me lol

I first had the idea for this thread during the EOY poll (Wet Leg et al.), so I'm wondering: is this a general trend across genres? Are there identifiable influences, roots, or causes? Can we blame it on the pandemic or on social media? Something about this feels vaguely TikTok-y perhaps, but I think there's a general post/status update quality to some of this stuff. And how do you feel about it?

For my part one of my favourite albums last year (Anthony James) was spoken poetry backed by jazz musicians, and I've enjoyed it on other jazz albums (Sons of Kemet, Sarathy Korwar). But none of the neo-post-punk stuff has really worked for me, maybe because the music is too simple?

Cassandra Jenkins - Hard Drive

The spoken track in the middle of last year’s Billie Eilish album

The spoken track in the middle of this year’s Raveena album

Only if it's Ken Nordine.

xp see that's interesting, I haven't heard any of those tracks, and the non-genre-specificity seems remarkable (?)

I don't think I've ever heard Nordine, is that a genuine recommendation Tom?

Yard Act is spoken word in the MES sense

&

Black Country, New Road is spoken word in the Slint sense

Ken Nordine was the man

oh yeah Yard Act was the one I was trying to remember rather than Wet Leg, and I think I listened to about 60 secs of BC,NR.

Did the 1975 do this recently too?

there was the extended greta thunberg spoken word intro on notes on a conditional form & the text-to-speech interlude on the album before that

matty has somehow had the sense not to do any sort of extended spoken word bit himself yet

See also Alabaster DePlume — there's a whole tradition of spoken word in jazz, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXE2WceZCsQ

true, but do you think there's more of it in contemporary jazz than usual? I honestly don't have the knowledge to tell

I hadn't thought of it until you posted that, but I wonder if I'm hung up on this because I sorely wish the new DePlume was Instrumentals Vol. 2

I also prefer DePlume sans vocal — or maybe one vocal an album.

I don't know if there's more of it in contemporary jazz, but for sure it has a presence. Moor Mother being the most obvious.

Root: Waldo Jeffers.

I like the opening of the thread title.

oh yeah Moor Mother is a good one to think about: I don't recall hearing much of a difference between how she vocalizes with Irreversible Entanglements versus her more hip hop releases, so there's some line-blurring going on there

Consider also spoken word bits in the middle of otherwise sung songs e.g. Fuga Ronto's 'Falling Star' to give a recent (tho acting as if a much older) example

I'll have to look that up

Another possible social/tech root: podcasts. A friend played me a Jenny Hval song the other day that was a mix of two spoken voice tracks. I didn't hate it, but it reminded me of how much less I enjoy podcasts than music and I struggled to focus on the words

Back in the day I could barely listen to electronic music if it didn't have spoken word samples

"I felt like I was part of something" a thread for Real Lies

marie davidson and her album, working class woman, went hard on this groove.
there was even an instrumental version of the album released, which if i am honest, i ended up listening to a lot more than the album proper.

great spoken word on Wolf Alice - Don't Delete the Kisses

I agree that "Hard Drive" sounds a little like an NPR-style podcast, or the way they talk on something like This American Life (...I'm a Jenkins fan, but this isn't meant as a compliment! lol)

I don't really hear podcasts in the other "first-person interlude" pop album traxx, though

matty has somehow had the sense not to do any sort of extended spoken word bit himself yet

"The Man Who Married A Robot" ?

Cassandra Jenkins - Hard Drive

lol YUCK

"the leanover" by life without buildings recently found second life as a tiktok hit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7TZwUa3Y0U

also this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4jR1RNypG0

Charlotte Adigéry (& Bolis Pupul) on some of the stuff on her (their) new album, if it counts? it’s one reason I’m quite ambivalent about their current direction

Plonk IX on the new Huerco S. album

There are many very, very, very different sorts of spoken word. The Leanover and LWB in general is high-level performance poetry. What rob is (correctly imo) sideeyeing is diaristic on-the-nose musing, which is fuckin everywhere yes

(Adigery gets away with it cos she's extremely witty obv)

I agree that "Hard Drive" sounds a little like an NPR-style podcast, or the way they talk on something like This American Life (...I'm a Jenkins fan, but this isn't meant as a compliment! lol)

I don't really hear podcasts in the other "first-person interlude" pop album traxx, though

― Please don’t take / My time change away (morrisp), Thursday, March 31, 2022 2:18 PM (two hours ago)

My podcast theory is admittedly quarter-baked, but to flesh it out slightly: I had more in mind the possibility that the popularity of podcasts has amplified/normalized passively listening to spoken or recited speech, rather than that the specific style of podcast speech was an influence. tbc I am not sold on this theory myself, as I suspect it fatally puts the cart before the horse

There are many very, very, very different sorts of spoken word

absolutely! I would actually love it if someone attempted a taxonomy; I dimly recall some chat on the EOY rollout in that direction. I think the only thing I would exclude is samples; that kind of decontextualization strikes me as qualitatively different (i.e, Reich's Come Out does not strike me as an influence on this stuff), though there are likely edge cases, as there are of course on the border between singing monotonously and speaking rhythmically.

tbh, I had forgotten until breastcrawl mentioned it, but the Adigery was one of the projects I did sort of have in mind—it's something I should like on paper but whose appeal eludes me, at least in part due to that declamatory delivery. That said, I'm not sure it counts either!

We kind of got into it a bit here: SONGS WHERE/SONGS THAT/SONGS WITH/SONGS IN WHICH

ah thanks, I hadn't thought about "What's He Building in There" in a while, that's a good one. For some reason that reminded me that PJ Harvey has a couple of these too iirc

To imago's point though, yeah, I think there's something zeitgeisty about the way most of the current uses I can think of are non-narrative, sometimes first-person, sometimes more like a manifesto. clemenza mentioned VU's "The Gift" at the start, and I couldn't put my finger on why I didn't quite buy that as the origin, and I think it's because it's too clearly a literary short story

sleaford mods, noname