bernard sumner?!

It isn't what it used to be
I wake up every night
on the stairs
waiting for the dawn to come

anyone ever try New Order at karaoke?

I find this whole thread bizarre tbh, I can count the number of memorable Sumner lines (ie, lyrics that actually registered with me/that I can recall off the top of my head) on one hand - the lyrics always felt like an inconsequential afterthought of no real significance. Absolutely baffled that anyone would rate them at all, much less as the "greatest of the rock era" ahead of idk Dylan, M.E. Smith, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, or so many others

You saw my follow-up, right?

there were several afaict but I am not convinced!

but then Joy Division/NO were never huge totems for me, idk. I like them both fine and get their importance/impact but never had a massive personal investment in them as others appear to.

his cousin gordon is alot better!

^^^ a little black spot on the thread today

unique in his own write

I don't know
If we could get lost in a city this size if we wanted to
And I don't know
If I could survive without seeing you

^^ from "Some Distant Memory," a song I adore.

I'm not cruel
And you're not evil
And we're not like
All those stupid people
Who can't decide
Which book to read
Unless the paper
Sows the seed

-"Run Wild". for my ilx homies

ok that's a silly lyric and the song is oddly Christian (what's with that?) and very basic in it's instrumentation... but damned if doesn't make me weep.

we are to each other
like sister and brother

better to live than to know

better the noise that we love than hate

otm:

This is the problem. I just can't figure the guy out.

One minute, he's the world's finest (only?) poet of disco existentialism. The next, he's belching and farting and hanging out with Shaun Ryder, and generally pretending not to be intelligent. You want to grab him and yell "stop trying to be Gazza when you know you're Baudelaire". But can both aspects be genuine? Can he really be an introspective genius in Joe Bloggs and a casual flick? On the evidence of Republic, he can.

In traditional terms, Sumner simply can't sing: after all this time, his voice is still scandalously "weak". Yet, for me, he has one of the most emotive voices in rock. Much of the time, he's cruising on autopilot through inscrutable (i.e. secretly meaningless) abstractions like "It's a jungle, I'm a freak/Hear me talk but never speak". Then, out of nowhere, he'll cut like jagged glass through all the truisms and deliver a truth (Remember 'Thieves Like Us'? "It's called love, and it's so uncool/It's called love... and somehow it's become unmentionable"). When he follows the line, "And we beg and we steal..." with "For we know LOVE IS REAL", it's so clear-as-a-bell plaintive that my heart turns to warm Courvoisier.

where is that from?

Simon Price's 1993 review of Republic.

Yup, still have that one around.

when I first heard new order, I thought that there were two vocalists, a deep voiced guy who goes “a heaven a gateway a hope” and a wobbly guy going “up down turn around!”

Barney talking through a sock puppet

He somehow manages to achieve beauty while writing lines like "You've caught me at a bad time/So why don't you piss off"

I can't think of anyone else who can pull this off like he can, although I am sure there are others.

Best lyricist of the rock era, with winsome voice an added bonus.

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, December 30, 2018

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Barney and also to . . . Michael Stipe???!!

Happy birthday, boo!

I feel fine and I feel good.

That's the danger of believing books
And all the lies of those thieves and crooks
We sing intellectual songs of love
From a stolen pen to a velvet glove

I can't believe there's any controversy about Bernard Sumner's unambiguously bad lyrics. There are some decent lines at the very beginning, where I suspect NO were simply completing songs half-written by Ian Curtis. By Republic, Sumner's lyrics had improved significantly—"Special" is the only song with cringeworthy lines ("I wake up every night on the stairs, waiting for the dawn to come").

But in the mid- to late-80s he just had so many stinkers:

"You waste your time, like my money / it ain't so funny, but it's true (Don't waste my money, baby)"

"It's called love, and it cuts your life like a broken knife"

"From my home I traveled far / I drove in my stolen car / When it broke down, I kissed the ground / 'Cause I don't kiss when you're around"

"I'd tell the world and save my soul / But rain falls down and I feel cold / A cold that sleeps within my heart / It tears the Earth and Sun apart"

New Order is one of my favorite bands of all time, but they are also responsible for some of the worst, most vapid lyrics I can think of.

I can't believe there's any controversy about Bernard Sumner's unambiguously bad lyrics.

^^ fixed

you CAN buy honey with money though

Well not in the society in which that song takes place, which makes you think. Has climate change made bees extinct?

Every “bad” lyric quoted in 3x5 post made me smile with fond recognition and I associate all of them with actual human emotions that I have experienced. Are they great poetry? Of course not, but they are surely effective pop lyrics. From a certain angle they might epitomise a certain passionate inarticulacy very reminiscent of my own teens and 20s (surely New Order are a band for teenagers at heart).

Anyway I am sure all of these points have been made above. But I am also sure that all those songs would
actually be made worse with more careful or worthy lyrics.

sumner's inane lyrics are very endearing and only rarely are they actual clunkers

Every “bad” lyric quoted in 3x5 post made me smile with fond recognition and I associate all of them with actual human emotions that I have experienced.

otm

sumner's best lyric is probably "regret" but his funniest (though co-written with tennant) is "getting away with it"

I'm partial to the chorus of "Everyone Everywhere," whose arrangement impresses me; the thing is mixed to perfection.

I remember hearing an interview with Electronic where Bernard summarized the theme of Get The Message as "stop spending all me money, bitch". and that was when I realized that I had probably been projecting way too much depth into his lyrics.

3x5 OTM.

The lyric to Every Little Counts is better than all English poetry from the 19th century

I think the idea behind New Order is pure formalism - fantasti engineering in the right context. The lack of commitment can work beautifully, but where I'm at feels clinical about four songs in and I have to put something else on.

New Order is the best argument against using lyrics in critic reviews to signify mediocrity imo. There's something so pure about the combo of the music and those words and Sumner's voice. I never have noticed the words negatively because I find so much of what they accomplish to be truly moving.

I remember hearing an interview with Electronic where Bernard summarized the theme of Get The Message as "stop spending all me money, bitch". and that was when I realized that I had probably been projecting way too much depth into his lyrics.

3x5 OTM.

well, yeah, we should listen to artists describing their own material