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.
― maffew12, Thursday, 3 January 2019 18:35 (five years ago) link
we are to each otherlike sister and brother
― reggie (qualmsley), Sunday, 6 January 2019 14:28 (five years ago) link
better to live than to know
― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 6 June 2019 20:06 (four years ago) link
better the noise that we love than hate
― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Thursday, 6 June 2019 20:12 (four years ago) link
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.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 5 May 2022 17:47 (one year ago) link
where is that from?
― brisk money (lukas), Thursday, 5 May 2022 17:49 (one year ago) link
Simon Price's 1993 review of Republic.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 5 May 2022 17:50 (one year ago) link
Yup, still have that one around.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 5 May 2022 17:57 (one year ago) link
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!”
― brimstead, Thursday, 5 May 2022 18:12 (one year ago) link
Barney talking through a sock puppet
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 5 May 2022 18:14 (one year ago) link
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.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 24 May 2022 01:18 (one year ago) link
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!
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 16:00 (one year ago) link
Happy birthday to Barney and also to . . . Michael Stipe???!!
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 4 January 2023 16:10 (one year ago) link
Happy birthday, boo!
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 January 2024 19:45 (three months ago) link
I feel fine and I feel good.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 4 January 2024 20:46 (three months ago) link
That's the danger of believing booksAnd all the lies of those thieves and crooksWe sing intellectual songs of loveFrom a stolen pen to a velvet glove
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 January 2024 23:45 (three months ago) link
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.
― Publicradio (3×5), Saturday, 6 January 2024 15:44 (three months ago) link
I can't believe there's any controversy about Bernard Sumner's unambiguously bad lyrics.
^^ fixed
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 6 January 2024 15:48 (three months ago) link
you CAN buy honey with money though
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Saturday, 6 January 2024 16:03 (three months ago) link
Well not in the society in which that song takes place, which makes you think. Has climate change made bees extinct?
― I am using your worlds, Saturday, 6 January 2024 17:46 (three months ago) link
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 wouldactually be made worse with more careful or worthy lyrics.
― meat and two vdgg (emsworth), Saturday, 6 January 2024 21:23 (three months ago) link
sumner's inane lyrics are very endearing and only rarely are they actual clunkers
― ufo, Saturday, 6 January 2024 22:21 (three months ago) link
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.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 6 January 2024 22:29 (three months ago) link
otm
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 6 January 2024 22:30 (three months ago) link
sumner's best lyric is probably "regret" but his funniest (though co-written with tennant) is "getting away with it"
― ufo, Saturday, 6 January 2024 22:40 (three months ago) link
I'm partial to the chorus of "Everyone Everywhere," whose arrangement impresses me; the thing is mixed to perfection.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 6 January 2024 22:41 (three months ago) link
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.
― enochroot, Sunday, 7 January 2024 00:18 (three months ago) link
The lyric to Every Little Counts is better than all English poetry from the 19th century
― Expansion to Mackerel (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, 7 January 2024 00:31 (three months ago) link
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.
― Confessions of an Oatmeal Eater (I M Losted), Sunday, 7 January 2024 01:06 (three months ago) link
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.
― omar little, Sunday, 7 January 2024 01:18 (three months ago) link
well, yeah, we should listen to artists describing their own material
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 January 2024 03:10 (three months ago) link