Lyrically great songs, as I wrote below, lay out an effective narrative over a supportive musical backing. The examples I picked to illustrate were those that achieved greatness addressing rich, emotionally freighted topics of loss, loneliness, redemption.
Here's the thing- "Sexy and I Know It" has lyrics that communicate another common human emotion just as effectively: horny dumbassedness. As I write this, I haven't listened to the song in weeks. But right off the top of my head, I can think of numerous lines in the song that strike that tone in a way that's both memorable and at least a little bit clever- "animal print pants on patrol," "passion in my pants," "no shoes no shirt I still get service." They're delivered with complete conviction, with nothing overtly jokey or ironic to undercut them. And they're backed up by music that supports and reinforces that kind of open silliness- a synth riff with an unexpected, goofy-sounding high note at the end of the phrase, those "aahs" as they demand you look at their body, and a beat that, as numerous YouTube commenters attest, is simple and bouncy enough to get their small children dancing.
Those precisely meet the criteria I laid out for strong lyrical songs. The difference between this and a song that meets those criteria by soberly addressing love and regret is between the ends of the songs, rather than the means. You may well think that loss and redemption are more appropriate topics for quality music than flopping your dick around in a speedo, and there's a clear logic to that. It's consistent with the sort of distinctions that people have been making for decades between the "highbrow" material they're willing to teach you in college and "lowbrow" disposable fluff.
But my guess is that even if you appreciate and embrace some "highbrow" art like jazz music or classic literature, you've also done at least one, and possibly all three, of the following in relation to this song or other equally "lowbrow" songs:
Openly danced to it at a wedding;
Watched the YouTube video to laugh along with friends;
Jokingly yelled a catchphrase (here it would most likely be "I WORK OUT!") from the song.
For "Sexy and I Know It," I've done all three. And I'm further willing to bet that the sheer, memorable ridiculousness of this song will make it more likely that I remember it in 20 years than a lot of music with the more traditional trappings of quality. I'll remember more archetypally "great" songs like those by Iron & Wine and the Mountain Goats, too, but I'll be more likely fondly remember "Sexy and I Know It" than a lot of only moderately successful attempts at traditionally "great" music.
To recap: "Sexy and I Know It" successfully communicates an emotion we've all felt; I've enjoyed it lyrically, musically, and visually; and I'm confident I'll remember it fondly down the road. Those are exactly the types of experiences that explain why I listen to music in the first place, so why should I get hung up on exactly how and why it succeeds? It just sounds like great music to me.
I can name plenty of examples where great lyrics make for great music, well beyond the two I highlighted in the last post. Even so, it should go without saying that music doesn't need lyrical value to be great, given how much of the classical and jazz canons have no lyrics at all. And I'd go further and say that there can be great songs with lyrics that are adequate, even forgettable and mediocre, because they're cases where the vocals are serving a primarily musical purpose. In the terms I've laid out in the last post, the vocals on those songs, and whatever they may be saying, are used as an "instrument" of melody and rhythm more than as a means to deliver a narrative. They're words for music, rather than music for words.
Most of what we think of as classic pop music fits this description; even the best of its kind is commonly accompanied by pretty standard-issue sentiments of love or (less frequently) freedom or regret or late nights out partying. But those lyrics often work just fine for capturing what the music itself is doing most of the work to communicate. The Shazam's "Some Other Time," for example, is a pretty straightforward, unremarkable lyrical narrative of lost love, filled with the most obvious relevant clichés: it wasn't meant to be except maybe in a dream; the singer wouldn't change a thing; the lover's name is now just another word. Those clichés, though, are supporting a pretty terrific pop melody that uses minor-key chord changes to more effectively strike the same tone of wistfulness and regret. If the lyrics were awkward enough to distract from the music, a la Train, they'd be a problem. But in this case, they're forgettable lyrics that still fit the song well, because they're consistent with, and supportive of, emotions the music more memorably evokes.
The point may come though even more sharply with musicians who openly acknowledge that they make up lyrics to fit their music. Carl Newman of the New Pornographers, for example, has been far from shy in saying that "the song is more important than the lyrics" for him and that lyrics have to "suit the song" regardless of whether it makes sense or even "ruins the narrative." And that attitude is clear in a song like "Sing Me Spanish Techno," which is utter lyrical nonsense from the title on down. But Newman makes a great song out of it because he has a fine sense of how to make his words suit the music.
For one thing, the words are still coherent enough in terms of subject-verb agreement, sentence structure and the like. More important, close listening demonstrates that his word selection carefully supports the musical grammar of the song. The verse grounds its melody in sharp rhythmic accents- grounded in the drums and hard strums on the acoustic guitar, but further enhanced by lyrics with lots of consonance. "Picking the glass off the ground" is meaningless as language, but it puts hard consonants right on the musical accents. By contrast, when the song transitions into a more legato vocal melody at about 1:30, the lyrics start relying more on words like "hills" and "refused," with softer consonants and vowel sounds that sound better extended to whole notes than, say, the hard "a" of "glass." All the nonsense words, in short, are quite effective as musical decisions.
Sigur Ros takes the approach of musical language to its logical conclusion. Jonsi claims he's singing in a made-up language called "Hopelandic," but it's even only a language in the loosest sense; the band's own website has also acknowledged that it's no more than "a form of gibberish vocals that fit to the music." That fit, on a song like "Svefn-G-Englar," follows many of the same fundamental principles as Newman's- long, open vocal sounds to support the legato lines of most of the song, with more consonance and harsher vowel sounds when the song briefly transitions to a more dissonant harmonic structure shortly after 6:00. It's the purest example possible of using the voice as instrument, with no narrative content- or even linguistic meaning- whatsoever.
So, after about a dozen paragraphs of rambling on, I can finally get back to where I started: foreign-language lyrics. (Still here, Allison? Anyone else who managed to stick around, you should go read her blog when you're done here.) Since I'm monolingual beyond some basic Spanglish, there aren't any foreign lyrics that can hold linguistic meaning for me. But they can work just fine as they result in vocals that work well as an instrument. I judge them the same way I would any other instrument: whether it works as a harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic contribution to the arrangement.
Often enough, foreign-language songs pass that test just fine. Nothing in the "Gangnam Style" vocals, for example, seems distracting or out of place in terms of consonance or vowel sounds. But given that other languages are bound to have different cadences, different sounds, different norms of articulation, they probably ARE more vulnerable to failing to meet the expectations for "natural" lyrical sounds I've learned as an English speaker. From the first moment of the Spanish song below, I can't get past a lyrical line that sounds, to me, both cluttered and awkwardly articulated, with lots of pleghmy consonants and hard vowels. For all I know, they're trying to articulate something narratively here that I'd find meaningful if I could interpret it. Or I could well be more acclimated to their vocal sounds if I were a Spanish speaker. In either case, I don't think I'm fit to judge the quality of this music, since it may be best measured against criteria that are outside the realm of my experience. All I can say is that, for that same reason, it's not for me.
I got a request from a friendly reader for my take on songs with non-English lyrics. Gladly! But since I'm me, and this is the blog that it is, I'm going to start by trying to figure out my general theories on lyrical value, then pivot back to explain how non-English lyrics fit in. (Allison, you know me well enough to know you weren't about to get a direct answer.)
As I've started doing research for the blog, I've discovered that while most academic musicologists, (like my pal Leonard Meyer) focus on classical music, there's actually a fair number writing about popular music. One of them, Richard Middleton, has proposed that there are three different uses of lyrics within the context of a whole song:
1. "Story," which emphasizes narrative and tends to be performed in a manner close to the speaking voice;
2. "Affect," which emphasizes the expressive nature of the words and "tends to merge with melody;"
3. "Gesture," which emphasizes "words as sound" and effectively uses the voice as "an instrument."
This framework makes a lot of sense. The sources I've read seem to agree with my biggest initial reservation, which is that "story" is not a common usage compared to the other two. There are certainly examples out there (country story-songs, rap that emphasizes the words rather than the rhythm of the delivery, that Shawn Mullins song from back in the '90s), enough to merit their place in a general model, but they're not common enough in my musical experience to need much more discussion. I'll just post that Shawn Mullins song and leave it at that.
Middleton's other two categories, though, capture a useful distinction. The way I'd put it is that most songs with lyrics can be great in one of two ways: either the music can support strong, memorable lyrics ("affect"), or the sound and tone of the lyrics can support strong, memorable music ("gesture"). In short, a great song can either offer music for great words, or words for great music.
Underlying that statement is an assumption that the music and the lyrics both need to meet some minimal level of quality for a song to be successful. A great musical arrangement still isn't going to work that well as a song if it's accompanied with, say, lyrics as distractingly lazy as Train's. Nor will great lyrics work without an adequate- and appropriate- musical backing; sensitive love-song lyrics are going to lose some of their impact backed with death-metal music, and any example of good lyrics are going to lose some of their weight and enjoyment if I still don't want to listen to the musical backing.
Put another way, great songs have both great music and good lyrics- the distinction is that in many songs, one plays the lead role and one plays support. I have no way to quantify this, but I feel safe in saying that, more often than not, music is in the lead role; melodies run through my head more often than do lyrics that resonate on their own terms. (This probably also has something to do with the fact that talented musicians are invariably going to make music, while talented writers may well go into poetry or short stories or whatever instead of becoming lyricists.)
That said, there are songs where the lyrics carry the primary weight of quality for me. Within the confines of a standard-length pop song, that's typically not a matter of a complete thought- it's usually a matter of using just a few words to communicate something vivid. The lyrics of The Mountain Goats' "Broom People" are a total of 101 words, but line by line, it uses its economy to capture a gut-punch portrait of an abusive household, both visual (the "white carpet thick with pet hair") and experiential (a sighed reference to "well-meaning teachers"), and with clearly personal details like the abuser's old car in the garage. (John Darnielle has been upfront about saying that the whole album addresses his life with an abusive stepfather.) It's a bit like a great establishing shot in a movie, communicating worlds in brief images.
Iron and Wine's "Dead Man's Will" achieves much the same, in its slightly different, eponymous form. It's a very structured approach of finding four expressions of "buried" love, all well-drawn in a few words, and all the more powerful for being driven home as the narrator repeated chorus beg for his "love to reach you all."
Both of these are, even on paper, great writing. But part of what makes them stick as great LYRICS is because the musical accompaniment provides such effective support. It's not just that the music meets our basic expectations for the tone of the song- relatively slow tempos, sweeping high notes- though that obviously helps. Both lyrics stand out so powerfully because there are a range of subtle musical cues that support, reinforce, even expand upon their tones and connotations.
In both cases above, much of that subtle success is in the way the music introduces a note of hopefulness and grace into devastating subject matter. Dead Man's Will is, on first listen, appropriately funereal, with the slow tempo of a funeral march and a choral arrangement that evokes a hymn. Upon further listening, though, that choral arrangement contains even deeper resonance. The musical arrangement drops out on the final chorus at 2:20, an effective decision to make stark the lonely cry of the narrator. But it's followed by a wordless chorus that swells the harmonies we've already heard before, and it's easy to start imagining that the father, mother, brother, lover, are now the ones singing. In purely musical terms, it's a nice way to open up the strong melody for a final spin. But it's also a way to suggest that his love has reached them all.
Broom People seems like a bit of an odder case at first, with dramatic piano chords and a thrumming cello line that seem too energetic, too anthemic for a story of a child writing down "good reasons to freeze to death." Until Darnielle pivots at the end of the verse to talk about the arms of another (a girlfriend, most likely) that turn him into a "babbling brook." On paper, the structural choice to dwell on what's at home is effective for dramatizing the draw of his escape, yet the pivot lands with even more force by resolving the tension between music and lyric.
It remains true that for me the impact of both songs is lyrical, the near-physical impact of invoking an abused child's "friends who don't have a clue" or hearing the posthumous regret of a man too "scared and stupid" to find love. But they're great as songs because the music is pumping the lyrics full of life. It can work the other way, too, and I'll take up that topic in the next post.
I consider some music lousy. I think I have good reasons. Even so, I've never been able to answer for myself one question: if that music brings other people pleasure, who cares? I like music; why should I denigrate anybody else's enjoyment of same? And it seems even less arguable that MAKING the music is a pleasure to the people involved, who almost always also have far more songwriting skills and/or musical chops than I do. Who the hell am I to criticize?
I want to focus this blog on music I like, even if some of the discussion will come in the form of constructive criticism. But if I'm trying to find a better way to talk about music, it's also important to be able to apply it to the music I like least. And any honest way of doing so needs to acknowledge that I still have reasons for disliking the music, even if I'm trying to get away from the sorts of blanket dismissals or snarky one-liners that ultimately attack people who are just enjoying music.
So my first shot is this: after acknowledging my snarky worst impulses, I'd like to try to find something genuinely and substantively nice to say about music I dislike. Then I'd like to return to criticizing, but with the hope that saying something nice results in a more balanced and constructive critique.
I'll give myself a relatively tough assignment to start: Train.
Tempting Snarky Dismissal: Middle-aged guys trying to act half their age by making drippy, dumbass pop music.
Hey, Say Something Nice: They consistently try to do something a little different with their lyrics. Most traditional pop lyrics, in English-professor terms, use terminal rhyme, where the rhymes occur at the end of the end of each lyrical clause. A clear example from the Magnetic Fields ("I Don't Believe You"), where the rhyme occurs at the end of each distinct statement:
So you quote love unquote me Well, stranger things have come to be But let's agree to disagree
Stephin Merritt is often clever enough to write interesting lyrics within this scheme, but a lot of pop music ends up relying on clichéd, overly familiar rhyme schemes to make this work. Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" is the first major offender that comes to mind- sorry, Lenny, but it just sounds thuddingly unoriginal to sing about how you want to fly so very high into the sky.
So credit to Train for breaking out of this structure by using internal rhyme, where the rhyme occurs in the middle of the second statement, rather than with the last word. This is standard in "Hey Soul Sister":
I knew I wouldn't forget you So I went and let you blow my mind
The way you can cut a rug Watching you is the only drug I need
Using a different scheme allows the lyrics to achieve a different sound and cadence on what's otherwise a rather straight-ahead pop song. And that also provides a melodic twist, since the vocal melody and phrasing is modified from the sorts of standard patterns that fit terminal rhyme.
Why That's Not Enough: They may be structured differently, but Train's lyrics are still awful enough to detract from whatever musical qualities they may have. I don't mind bland or vague lyrics that fit a song- early Beatles songs, for example, aren't exactly masterpieces of lyrical sophistication, but they fit the simplicity of the music, and they don't distract from the quality of the songwriting. But I do find that if lyrics don't sound at all like something actual things humans would say, it takes me out of the song. Take this internal rhyme scheme in "If It's Love":
My feet have been on the floor, flat like an Idol singer Remember winger, I digress, I confess you are the best thing in my life A different structure is more trouble than it's worth if you have to throw in a distractingly random reference to an '80s hair band to make it work. And even that's not as bad as "Calling All Angels":
When children have to play inside, so they don't disappear While private eyes solve marriage lies 'cause we don't talk for years And football teams are kissing queens and losing sight of having dreams In a world where what we want is only what we want until it's ours Who has ever used the phrase "marriage lies"? Who are the "queens"? How can you lose sight of HAVING dreams, as opposed to losing the ability to achieve them? I find these lyrics bad because they're silly and laughable enough to dominate my listening experience and my post-hoc memory of the song. But they bother me for a deeper reason, too: they sound lazy. It clearly sounds like they threw in "cut a rug" because it's the first thing they thought of to rhyme with drug. And I'm guessing they weren't intending to take a stand against gay football players, but they apparently didn't think enough about their lyrics to realize that's the most logical way the "Calling All Angels" passage reads in context. I care enough about music to spend time on this blog trying to express that in writing. I think it's fair for me to ask musicians to make more of an effort than this in return.
