Post a controversial music opinion

Someone is going to need to provide receipts on Pink Floyd being more influential than VU beyond just that they were more popular so more people heard them.

I will take Future Games and Bare Trees over all or nearly all Floyd albums.

It's "thin, wild mercury music" not "thin, wild mercury words."

good music, good lyrics - ideal
good music, bad lyrics - works
bad music, good lyrics - doesn't work
bad music, bad lyrics - obv the worst

love Steve but I think he's full of shit wrt Big Black
he certainly cultivated a pretty distinctive lyrical identity for a band with supposedly tossed off lyrics

Lyrics can also be important for reasons other than literal meaning.

xp lol yes for real. few bands were more serious about having a "political or aesthetic battle plan" than big black

I'm just saying lyrics were important to BB

What we sing about is none of your business anyway." — Steve Albini

I don't even know what this means, you made the record and sold it dude

Of course it's bullshit. But it's bullshit in the same way Dylan was bullshitting when he called (calls) himself a "song and dance man." Kidding on the square, I believe, is the expression.

xp to Alfred, I get that about Alicia Keys. She sings flat, always, with such consistency, she's always exactly flat by the same amount. I've theorized that she wears her headphones a specific way in the booth, like, one ear half-off, which can cause the pitch in the playback to sound lower than it is, idk. She's always flat.

As for Stevie Wonder, whatever I guess. However you feel about Bruno Mars, that's how I feel about Stevie Wonder. I like corny music, except when I don't, same as anybody else

I kind of agree with M@tt but OTOH "A/B Machines" is one of the best Sleigh Bells songs, the lyrics to which are "Got my A machines on the table / Got my B machines on the floor / *incoherent scream*"

bad music, good lyrics - doesn't work

It's hard to come up with an example of this, tbh

I like the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, the Doors... and Stevie Wonder, I'm quite happy.

i mean the main reason the doors lyrics falter is bc they have a reputation that doesn't match the reality, that isn't the band's fault. they are also v pretentious, which is. but i think i'm maybe overstating it if i call them "bad," as the occasional isolated line does sound really good to me, and i've been quoting the "peace frog" lyrics in the licorice pizza thread ever since i saw the movie

for the most part the "do lyrics matter" conversation is v dull to me, and has been rehashed here thousands of times. the answer is always: depends on the band

It's hard to come up with an example of this, tbh

weren't we just talking about Velvet Underground

That Albini quote always seemed so strange to me, like he was forced against his will to write lyrics for his compositions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YveC8laqCs

It's hard to come up with an example of this, tbh

― jmm, Tuesday, March 1, 2022 1:35 PM (two minutes ago)

would a bad cover of a good song w/lyrics count?

Pre-electric Dylan actually is my go-to example of good lyrics with music I have trouble enjoying. I usually prefer covers. Leonard Cohen can also be more palatable when covered for me.

@ ums I don't really think that's a dichotomy that makes any sense

Something that really stuck with me from school is that it's really hard, as a composer, to set "good poetry" to music. Text that succeeds on the page is harder to marry to music. My teacher advised us, when looking for text to set, to not approach our favourite poems, but to seek out ones that felt unfinished, like they "could use some help" or whatever. Teacher said "this is why people don't set Shakespeare sonnets to music" and "this is why songs with Auden as the text never really work so well"

Since then I've kinda thought that lyrics-to-music is relational. Cohen's music is at times pretty placeholder, if it were any more interesting or rich then it'd weaken the lyric. Destroyer and Silver Jews have the same vibe to me, the music has to be somewhat low-content so that the lyrics remain the focus. It's not "good lyrics, bad music", it's more of a relationship between music and lyrics, a balancing of content and a balancing of importance

for the most part the "do lyrics matter" conversation is v dull to me, and has been rehashed here thousands of times. the answer is always: depends on the band

Perfect example: Deftones. Their songs could be about literally anything; the way Chino meows them is all that matters.

Hell, sometimes (I'd bet more often than people realize) the non-singing bandmembers don't even care about the lyrics! When I interviewed Eugene Robinson of Oxbow for The Wire, he told me that their bass player not only doesn't care what the lyrics to Oxbow songs are about, he doesn't listen to lyrics at all. "When he listens to music for pleasure, the guy could be singing about eggs, the guy could be singing about shoes. Dan doesn't give a fuck. He's listening for feel or something else."

^ much better thought-out and articulated than what I was saying xp

Here's my controversial music opinion: People who dislike prime Stevie Wonder deserve harsh criticism.

Natural splits sunburn jets pride marks smart bets
Strikers luck pitch backs heap tips pit slacks
Dressed pints demon shrinks bread drunk dead drinks
Stretch clubs models box draw skin black shocks

Money spines paper lung kidney bingos organ fun

Flag stunt rock stone dole axe crash dive
Breath thrift take speed double take weekends
Skull row drugs hall colour bars sex calls
Sparkle finds rented rings pretty things clipped wings

Gold street spy fleet scandal food poor treat
Fire run club gun rule mob burn some
Bomb time pop crime stock frame steady climb
Fresh name donor game fair meat all the same

Something that really stuck with me from school is that it's really hard, as a composer, to set "good poetry" to music. Text that succeeds on the page is harder to marry to music. My teacher advised us, when looking for text to set, to not approach our favourite poems, but to seek out ones that felt unfinished, like they "could use some help" or whatever. Teacher said "this is why people don't set Shakespeare sonnets to music" and "this is why songs with Auden as the text never really work so well"

"This is why Elton John is often awkward" -- yet works much of the time.

I don't know, I listen to Leonard Cohen for the music and singing, the lyrics are there and they're good but if they weren't good it wouldn't make much difference to me.

for the most part the "do lyrics matter" conversation is v dull to me, and has been rehashed here thousands of times. the answer is always: depends on the band

Yeah this is pretty otm

I argue that lyrics always matter (because a lyric that doesn't work will ruin any song always), but that lyric-quality has its own metric that is unrelated to poetry or any other text. i.e. one of the best lyrics of all time is Devo's "yeah yeah yeah yeah yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeah" in "Uncontrollable Urge"

Here's my controversial music opinion: People who dislike prime Stevie Wonder deserve harsh criticism.

I remember being excoriated once for saying I dared to dislike "Lovely Day" because of its interminable outro, despite being an enormous fan of Bill Withers, otherwise. You can harshly criticize me all you want. Stevie Wonder's music is still corny and unlistenable

fgti - good post, buy I would argue that I think the examples you cite are all good music! particularly because they allow the lyrics to breathe

though as w those examples that takes a pretty high level above merely good lyrics to pull off

I suppose there's no way you can post without being an asshat.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 1, 2022 8:52 AM

???????

not sure if you're intentionally trying to provoke or what — i was chuckling at brad's near dismissal of the most prominent (very much problematic and imo indefensible) aspect of the band. if it works for brad, great! but as someone who can't stand jim morrison, i'm not allowed to find humor in that? literally nothing more to my comment.

The Doors are far more enjoyable to listen to than Pink Floyd

― joygoat, Tuesday, March 1, 2022 9:51 AM

doing the controp thread correctly right there.

finally: lyrics in pop/rock are stupid for the most part and i would do just fine without them or with wordless vocals in their place. that said, sometimes they're are good. not very often though.

they're are = they're very

lyric-quality has its own metric that is unrelated to poetry or any other text.

I remember Simon Frith's "Why Do Songs Have Words?" being p good. (And again, I'm usually a Fred guy all the way myself.)

I'm not mad at ya FGTI. Just bemused.

I agree with Brad re: The Doors, except that I still cannot find myself enjoying to listen to them, me

I always thought it really interesting/weird that Nico (Paffgen) adored Jim Morrison so much, like thought of him as the greatest of all time, like she could hear something about his lyrics that I can't/don't.

At least one guy who writes about Great American Songbook stuff and lyricists in particular, seems to often discuss the relationship of those lyrics to light verse as opposed to poetry proper.
http://vintagebandstand.blogspot.com/2013/01/interview-with-philip-furia-author-of.html.
Dylan at his best or most typical does a kind of Baudelaire meets Maverick Stanzas Mashup which works great for him when it works, for others not quite so much.

Maybe Rimbaud more that Baudelaire, but I, um, took some poetic license because I liked the way the latter scanned better.

lyrics in pop/rock are stupid for the most part and i would do just fine without them or with wordless vocals in their place. that said, sometimes they're are good. not very often though

Agree with this. Well, I don't know if they're stupid or not really, I rarely hear them.

See also: Do Words Belong in Music?

I'm not mad at ya FGTI. Just bemused.

It's fine. I feel like "disliking Stevie Wonder's music" is so weird to people. I think it's so weird that people like him so much, if even at all. But I get the response and I'm not that surprised. I was dating somebody who told me in passing that they didn't like Prince, and I kinda blinked and realized that the relationship wasn't working

I was going to strongly rebut FGTI's comment about Shakespeare until I realized all the things I liked were really settings from plays rather than sonnets

its ok that people dont like prince it just means they arent cool, sexy or horny.

I gave up long ago the idea that my partner would (or should) generally like the same music/movies as I do. In fact, I'd rather keep my tastes to myself thanks.

idk if that's controversial, but def otm to me

it makes the moments where tastes converge more special

nah overlap is good

So long as my boyfriend has tastes

Where it becomes potentially controversial is where I say it's possible to get married to a guy that likes contemporary pop country.

I don't care if he dismisses Edith Wharton or Jazmine Sullivan, but I wouldn't date a guy who doesn't know them, nor would I bother with a guy whose curiosity is thimble-wide.

idk what the perfect amount of overlap is but it is significantly higher than 0%

Where it becomes potentially controversial is where I say it's possible to get married to a guy that likes contemporary pop country.

― Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Tuesday, March 1, 2022 2:24 PM (

I'd marry you even if you had no taste for Miranda Lambert.

The joy of sharing a life with someone where your common ground is yacht rock, Motown and pre-fusion jazz.

I'd marry you even if you had no taste for Miranda Lambert.

Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an Art Tatum.

i like being with someone who has a more normal/healthy relationship with music than i do, it encourages me to try different things, think about different things