Have lyrics lost their worth?

[S4R]

Do you think lyrics have lost their worth?

I think for a lot of music lyrics have lost their worth. I notice that people will have a favorite song and not even know the lyrics to it. I think most people care only for the music; rightfully so or not I am unsure; but you'll notice for instance that in a great deal of mainstream music the lyrics are rather feeble. I believe that many people simply want a song they can move to, and could care less what the artist is saying. In fact I would go as far to say that some artists don't care what they are saying.

 

[Obyeybyeogone]

Let me quote the Simpsons (yes, again):

All my other band members switched from Christian pop to regular pop, all you do is replace the word Jesus with baby.

 

[Mikael is God]

read soilwork's lyrics

 

[Hannu Mutanen]

The "sha-la-la" attitude towards lyricism, which I think someone has aptly named dadaism, has in my opinion pretty much always been evident in popular music. If we take pop music, it is by nature not a vehicle for opinions for when accompanying the music with a message it quickly goes beyond the function of pop music and swiftly shifts into another genre, much because of the genre borders I will mention later in the text. It is delightful, however, that people making the more radical decisions in the music of their time are the ones to assess and subsequently understand the importance of actually saying something in stead of having words in music just for the sake of having a human voice in there. Thus the line dividing the "serious" and "entertaining" forms of music is basically drawn by the artists' attention to lyrics and we can not really decide whether or not lyrics have worth in themselves in the public eye, because we are given exemplifications of both extremes all the time. So as far as the actual music goes, there probably will always be both those artists that give lyrics some significance and those who do not, and when the former crosses another border set for a genre's typical lyrical approach, this line between serious and entertaining music is blurred again.

As far as listeners go, I can not say if the value of lyrics has decreased, but it certainly is very small these days. The lyrics in most music these days are very feeble, not only in mainstream music. All the worthless lyrics in various genres just operate within a certain pattern, a conception of lyrics fit for the type of music in question. For instance: a new pop starlet saying "la-di-la I love you sugar" is quite much the same as a new black metal group singing "bleurgh! Satan is my father!" Their own contexts are just two different and separate ones with the same comprehension of the function of the lyrics, and the listeners of these genres only pay attention to the lyrics when coming across whatever style it may be. When they sing of Satan, Satan is really cool to sing about and that is merely that. Nothing more needed. The same goes for the happy poppers, who sing of love and flowers. Whenever these artists break away from these rules, their lyrics will create a response. Aqua did it with "Barbie girl" (I hear some of you asking "how can you remember that?"), The Beatles did it when they gave up the 'nice' image, Order From Chaos changed the basis for death metal lyrics, Cradle of Filth did it with making something like short stories in stead of the typical "drinking blood" -lyrics they are accused of having. And, as you can see, all these artists did actually generate a response. So the problem may actually be with the artists' lack of proper understanding of lyrics.

Luckily, we have artists who do actually brave the line between these opposites, making lyrics that break borders. Not many metalheads would have expected Solefald to incorporate philosophically opining texts about the world and humans with a taste of criticism into extreme metal; the outset may be the same as with others who criticise us humans, but Solefald does it differently, thus breaking borders.

Hmm...OK, this is enough..

 

[GuitarShredder]

Well, it's not just pop that has bad lyrics. Most death metal?

 

[Wolff]

Originally posted by Soul4Raziel
Do you think lyrics have lost their worth?

I think for a lot of music lyrics have lost their worth. I notice that people will have a favorite song and not even know the lyrics to it. I think most people care only for the music; rightfully so or not I am unsure; but you'll notice for instance that in a great deal of mainstream music the lyrics are rather feeble. I believe that many people simply want a song they can move to, and could care less what the artist is saying. In fact I would go as far to say that some artists don't care what they are saying.

Well, we're in the hip-hop age, where lyrics supposedly matter. They're stupid and fickle, but they supposedly matter more than say the 80's pop.

As far as metal goes, I'm not sure I see a trend. You got the great poets (darren white, aaron stainthorpe, akerfeldt etc) and you have the nu-metal crap. A decade ago you had axl rose, sebastian bach, and the rest of the hair bands... or jim morrison, plant and the rest of...........................

 

[terrymx]

even though people think axl rose is a dick, i like november rain and slash

sorry this have nothing to do with your topic, and yes, lyric value has lost their worth

 

[SentencedToBurn]

depends what music you look at. some do and some dont. alot of death metal bands have stupid lyrics but look at dying fetus. they have great lyrics. and for black metal, most of that is dull. some of the stuff dimmu says is true though and some other bands. the thing that is really sad is rave music. now that doesnt even HAVE lyrics except for an occasional "get up" or "oh yeah" or "feel the beat". There will always be great lyrics in music from at least one band

 

[Duvall]

In music without lyrics, the music plays frontman. We discussed earlier about how in metal, the growl is used as another instrument, and receives (or should) equal billing.

In current rave culture music, the music is to: a) supposed provide a beat that can be danced to, and b)is typically improvised, given a good DJ. The music doesn't need lyrics, and I'm not talking about the stuff with "uh huh" and "yeah."

I think to intelligent people, lyrics still hold a lot of meaning. I listen to popular radio all day long (it's a Rock station..) so I hear a lot of the softer nu-metal type bands. I also hear a lot of Canadian Content, and bands like.. Wide Mouth Mason, who I've never been a fan of, have good lyrics. They're well written, fairly unique, evoke imagery and emotion. There are a lot of bands that DO write good lyrics, but they perhaps aren't the most popular. I think people who like REALLY popular stuff (britney whores, Crazy Town) realize that the music sucks. All they do care about is how popular they are by listening to it. They convince themselves that it's good.

It doesn't take long (and a listen to Pretty Little Ditty by RHCP) to realize that these bands have no worth, and will soon fade. Only the very brightest of stars stays at the top, and they have multi-million dollar teams of writers and merchandisers and lawyers to aid their conquest of the music scene.

I think, in conclusion, the lyrics are there, but only the smart people notice. The rest are blissfully ignorant watching britney's enlarged breasts heaving in "I'm a Slave 4 U," which also features her orgasming.

Which would you rather be? The slathering know-nothing, or the insightful lyric-lover?