The thread where you talk about non-metal music you like.

[Omni]

Yeah, his 1960s material is pretty consistent.

I know we aren't talking about metal, but I think that Neil Young is more consistent than Bob Dylan and I prefer his music most of the time. They're both similar musicians who mutually influenced one another, but Young is clearly also a superior guitarist and a more varied musician. He has a lot of songs that I consider absolutely timeless.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i love neil young too, i'm surprised he hasn't been in the non-metal game yet!

 

[Omni]

I might submit him next time that I play, as long as he matches a theme.

 

[H.P. Lovecraft]

I don't listen to any deathcore, but there is certainly musically technical stuff there, and I don't know how you can pretend it's any less technical than your average polished Nuclear Blast/etc melodeath or brutal death metal band.



"Smiling at the memories / When I slaughtered the whore" sounds like angsty revenge fantasy against an ex to me.

Well, it's a good thing I don't care much for "your average polished Nuclear Blast/etc melodeath or brutal death metal band" for the most part then.

 

[CiG]

I prefer Nick Drake to both if I'm being honest. Always preferred Irish folk in general though.

"Smiling at the memories / When I slaughtered the whore" sounds like angsty revenge fantasy against an ex to me.

Fair enough.

 

[H.P. Lovecraft]

I think this comes down to what you're looking for in lyrics. I don't care about how popular Dylan is, you could call Beiber the voice of a generation based on his popularity in the past with a certain age group and I guess we can both agree that his music is well-produced shit, so popularity isn't a factor to me. Not to say that I think Dylan is on the same level as Bieber. I respect Dylan, but to me, his lyrics have no punch. Tom Waits does "folky" music with what I would call "punch". With Dylan, I just feel no spark. To me, it's the same, old, whiny folk song-writer cliche themes. The world is bad, beggars, drugs, sadness, yadda, yadda (I know very well that's not the only theme, but that's the way I feel about it). I understand that to many people that's exactly the themes they want to hear, it's easy to digest and takes no effort to relate and feel intellectual about it, but to me, I've been growing up listening to whiny song-writer music that my mom used to listen to, it just seems empty and cliches by now, there's nothing surprising or interesting to me in it, just the same old, sulky stories beaten to death. Amerika is nice, but it's supposed to be stereo-typically "American" if you will - simple, straight, easy to digest. It's part of the critique and mockery of that song. Not really a piece where Lindemann shines imo. A better song would be "Man against Man (Mann gegen Mann)" if you want to get more poetical, but even there, the translations don't do it justice, because the clever world-play gets lost in translation (like where the lyrics go "I am the servant of 2 masters" - the word for master and mister are the same in this case, "link in chain" - "link" can be both a chain link and a man's phallus, etc.). But yeah, I guess his lyrics are "edgy teenager" stuff, surely that's why his book "Messer" is rated 4.48/5 @ goodreads based on reviews, cause it's edgy teenager poetry .

You say popularity doesn't really mean anything, then proceed to try and justify Lindemann's work as higher quality by citing review scores for his book. By the way, Goodreads reviews aren't something I'd rely on for a seal of approval. The first Twilight book has an average of 3.5/5. And I do agree, Till has an exceptional talent for playing with double entendre, but that seems to be his only truly great strength as a songwriter. But, it seems the majority of your argument against Dylan is that you personally just can't get into it. Say, for the sake of argument, I just couldn't get into Zappa. Say I found him inaccessible and felt like I'd heard it all before because of all the experimental rock I'd been exposed to previously. Does that diminish the brilliance of Zappa's work? No, it simply means I couldn't get into it due to my own listening predilections.

 

[H.P. Lovecraft]

Honestly, I don't feel like I know enough about the history of modern music to dispute that and I'm not interested enough in it to do any research, so I'm taking your word for it for now . Mind giving some examples though?

He's responsible for quite a bit really. Subterranean Homesick Blues had one of the first "music videos" as we know them, Like A Rolling Stone changed the face of music period by almost topping the charts in 1965 (it got to number 2 on the Billboard charts, and actually topped the Cashbox charts, hittting number 1) despite being 6 minutes of sung poetry. And in 1965, it was pretty much an unspoken rule that only 2 or 3 minute pop singles got that far up the chart. So when that got up there? It was not only an astounding acheivement by Dylan, but it paved the way to stardom for literally any band or artist who wanted to write lengthier songs with greater depth. He was also a prime influence on The Beatles, and was key in pushing them from pop rock to the absolutely legendary artitistic experiments of the rest of their career beginning with Help! and Rubber Soul. Lennon was quoted as saying "I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing pop songs. We would turn out a certain style of song for a single... I'd have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the meat market, and I didn't consider them (the lyrics or anything) to have any depth at all... then I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively. I'd started thinking about my own emotions... instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself. It was Dylan who helped me realize that." Ringo Starr has described him as "an idol" for The Beatles and Paul McCartney claimed he was "our hero". Bob was also the one who introduced them to marijuana, and thus giving them a more formal introduction to drugs (they'd taken Preludin once before), which lent greatly to their creative process on Rubber Soul and beyond. In other words, Dylan was a prime driving force in The Beatles becoming more cerebral, and creating what they did from the mid-60s onwards. So, if you know how influential The Beatles material from that period is? Christ. Dylan was, in addition, the one who kept the acoustic rockstar in business during the 60s when every one was jumping ship for electric. And that's just some of the biggest stuff.

 

[Burkhard]

 

[NeonMetalDude]

You say popularity doesn't really mean anything, then proceed to try and justify Lindemann's work as higher quality by citing review scores for his book. By the way, Goodreads reviews aren't something I'd rely on for a seal of approval. The first Twilight book has an average of 3.5/5. And I do agree, Till has an exceptional talent for playing with double entendre, but that seems to be his only truly great strength as a songwriter. But, it seems the majority of your argument against Dylan is that you personally just can't get into it. Say, for the sake of argument, I just couldn't get into Zappa. Say I found him inaccessible and felt like I'd heard it all before because of all the experimental rock I'd been exposed to previously. Does that diminish the brilliance of Zappa's work? No, it simply means I couldn't get into it due to my own listening predilections.

Dude, tbh, I feel like your hard on for Dylan is preventing you from taking my comments for what they are or you skipped over them. I am not "against" Dylan, I wrote in my previous comments that he's good, "quality", etc., but not the "God-like" poet he's made out to be and I don't feel bad for not being impressed, because Dylan worship is incredibly exaggerated.

I agree that goodreads isn't an absolute measuring stick and I was aware of my previous argument when I wrote that sentence, but the point was that it's people who've read a book or two and the rating of Till's book is as high as it gets. 3.5 is pretty weak, not many books get over 4.5, which kinda implies it's not of as low quality as you would like to convince me it is. Even with Bieber, who's worthless to me, somebody did a great job producing that music and creating a teen idol. I hate it, but I realize something did a good job creating a product. The difference is, I can acknowledge that something I don't like has some kind of quality, even if this kind of quality doesn't speak to me. The fact that Dylan doesn't speak to me and is overrated in my opinion doesn't mean he's shit. That's the impression I got from your comments and coincidentally, you chose somebody who I'm absolutely not impressed with and even though I've heard his songs and read his lyrics (heck, my mom's a published writer & poet where I live, who's lyrics got adapted by pop artists and ranked pretty well in charts and while it doesn't make me a poet or writer as well, it's not like I'm completely ignorant about poetry), I'm just not impressed, because it's cliche to me.

About your other comment. I see you have a personal history with his music, good for you. Glad for you it helped you with your songwriting. Just as me loving Lindemann, because it is a combination of all I believe about art. Minimalism, love of the language and its creative use (hard to appreciate for non-German speaking fok), not writing about themes beaten to death, decadence, the capability of making the common man both love your work and feel surprised and disgusted, with the exception of some recent songs aimed at the American market (I assume, since they're written in English) - not being vulgar, etc.

It's just a totally different kind of writing and for the sake of not dragging this out, I'll just repeat it once more. Dylan's writing is good, I'm just not impressed. Using main stream influence, regardless of artist, doesn't prove their God-like status. It's inspired a lot more mainstream, which is written to be easy to digest, easy to identify with and possibly make you feel cool/smart/whatever. And that's fine - who am I to judge that (I mean, I might dislike it and don't think highly of it, but people are happy, so what the hell... except Babymetal of course )? But for me personally, that's like the lowest kind of art. I do believe that you need a bit of that in every song, which is again something why I adore Lindemann. Creating songs that have that simple pop element, few words, yet hide more. I love it. Not everybody does, I get that. Which is also why I'm not impressed with Dylan - the guy will yack on about whatever he wants to say forever, making it so transparent what he's trying to say, it bores me. It's like Lindemann writes 4 lines about a theme and Dylan would stretch that into 3 songs (exaggerating now, obviously). It's just not my kind of thing and there's little enjoyment in that for me.

Anyway, I'd say, you don't like Lindemann, I'm not impressed with Dylan. I'm fine with that, I'm sorry for offending you since I see now that he's kind of a hero to you, I mean if it offended you.

 

[no country for old wainds]

the guy will yack on about whatever he wants to say forever, making it so transparent what he's trying to say, it bores me.

he's far from minimalist in his approach to lyrics for sure, but he's also farrrrrr from transparent during his most acclaimed period, if anything he's consciously (some might say pretentiously) opaque and paradoxical which is why the world has always found him so fascinating. your summary of his supposed themes is unsatisfactory to say the least (and needless to say, the burden of proof would be on you as you're going up against half a century of wide-ranging critical analysis that extends a million miles beyond what you said). i can't speak for the other guy and i don't give a shit that dylan isn't your thing, but it doesn't serve your arguments about his overratedness very well if you keep characterising him so simplistically and flippantly.

 

[H.P. Lovecraft]

I don't think I skipped over much of your comment really. The larger part of your comment seemed to be explaining how you felt Dylan was something that just wasn't for you. And I know you aren't against him, you've already said you found him respectable. When I said "against Dylan", I meant you were making an argument against the quality of his work. Just like I'm not "against" Till Lindemann, I think he's a great frontman, good singer, and decent songwriter. I simply don't feel he compares to Bob in terms of songwriting. Even if you did hate Bob that wouldn't bother me honestly, because as I've said before, everyone has their own taste; and they have every right to it. And it's okay not to be impressed with his songwriting, nothing is meant to click with everybody. I certainly don't worship him either, he's released some real garbage in terms of albums, especially in the 80s. However, I feel I can't deny him his proper due in terms of respect as a songwriter. I wasn't aware of the collective drop off in terms of reviews on Goodreads, so pardon the clerical error on my part. But 3.5/5? That's a 7/10, just saying. Granted, Till's is rated much higher. "Glad for you it helped with your songwriting"? What in the blazes are you on about? I talked about him helping the Beatles' songwriting along, I'm not even a songwriter. As for Dylan writing about things that'd been beaten to death, he was quite honestly something else when he came on the scene in the late 50s and early 60s. You know how you talk about Lindemann being vulgar and relatable all at once? When Dylan addressed something, the common man could get into the base of it, but the rabbit hole went deeper than just that base level of comprehension that most people could attain, for quite a few of his songs. Just look at It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding). That is not a song you just hear and understand it. Or Bob Dylan's 115th Dream or The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. Same thing. You can relate strongly to the basics of it, but true understanding takes some seriously strong analysis. There's also another strength of Dylan, he can take something simple at its core and build a veritable labyrinth of convolution around it. Even if a ton of songwriters sang about dreams before him, they still won't tackle it like Dylan did, because he did it his own way. Even if so many other songwriters offer something on a topic, Dylan usually finds a more nuanced or separated angle on it or tackles the same angle in his own wildly unique manner. Or he does something he's always done very well, and finds his own topic as with the hilariously titled Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues. He covered a large breadth of the human experience in his own way, in a way the commoner could relate to, but with other levels that challenge said commoner. Not to mention, a lot of those lyrical styles he uses you say are cliché, he pioneered, including the rambling stream of consciousness narrative and confessional singer/songwriter to name a couple. We can both agree on Babymetal however, they're utterly cancerous. In terms of influence itself, sure the magnitude of it isn't an instant validation of greatness, however, when you've influenced someone as great as The Beatles, there's a decent chance you're doing something worthwhile. Dylan is verbose yes, but he makes sure he's saying something of value with such words. If you've ever looked behind the scenes at his writing process, he goes through draft after draft after draft until he's communicating exactly what he wants in the exact way he wants, and he does this with practically every last line he pens. He refuses to sit down and just write something for the sake of writing it. He doesn't belabor his point either, Dylan's songs are very much lyrically evolving creatures, they'll have a core concept they hold onto, but they often add more and more with every verse.

 

[CiG]

Holy shit wall of text.

 

[Satanstoenail]

Yeah I'm pretty sure no one is going to read that post except NeonMetalDude.

 

[H.P. Lovecraft]

That's really my sole concern considering he's the one I'm discussing this with.

 

[NeonMetalDude]

he's far from minimalist in his approach to lyrics for sure, but he's also farrrrrr from transparent during his most acclaimed period, if anything he's consciously (some might say pretentiously) opaque and paradoxical which is why the world has always found him so fascinating. your summary of his supposed themes is unsatisfactory to say the least (and needless to say, the burden of proof would be on you as you're going up against half a century of wide-ranging critical analysis that extends a million miles beyond what you said). i can't speak for the other guy and i don't give a shit that dylan isn't your thing, but it doesn't serve your arguments about his overratedness very well if you keep characterising him so simplistically and flippantly.

In that very comment I made it clear that I'm well aware that my characteristic of his song lyrics wasn't even close to objective. I was more expressing my personal feelings than writing a piece on what themes Dylan touched on.

 

[NeonMetalDude]

H.P., I did read through your comment, first of all sorry, I misread the part about your songwriting. Either way, I think what it comes to is that we both expressed, you as likely a native English speaker (or just a better English speaker) in a much prettier manner, that we enjoy different things about song-lyrics and look for different things in art. What to you seems of great value in a song or in art in general, doesn't seem that way to me and vice-versa. I guess "different strokes for different folks", essentially. Just as you feel that a simple listen to a Dylan song isn't enough to "get it" in many cases and to understand all the that's hidden under the surface, that's the same way I feel about Lindemann. One needs to "get it". But the "getting it" is individual and optional, one doesn't always "click" with the writer and who's the say there's something to "click" with? Highly subjective stuff I guess. I'm a man who prefers to be hit with 2 words instead of 200. Gut me with a sentence, not a book. But do it delicately as well, I like to be entertained.
....... EDIT ........
For me personally, Lindemann does this and I haven't seen it be done better so far. The balance between the elements like the play on words, the language, the themes, the build-up, minimalist structure... I love decadent themes, but for God's sake, do it elegantly, add in a pinch of innocence. That's what creates the tension. Beautiful words to describe hideous acts.
....... / EDIT ........

I respect Dylan is his pioneering and his success and the apparent quality in what he's been doing. The thing is, for me personally, respect doesn't equal enjoyment and I guess we're not too different on this topic. I will never listen to somebody I respect (past a point where I'm interested to learn about them and what they have to say), but won't stop listening to people whose art I enjoy.

I don't feel like I can add much more to the discussion at this point as I've said all that I can say and I don't think either of us are going to change our minds soon, so I'd say let's unite in finding Babymetal a fucking disgusting disgrace?

Also, thanks for taking the time for the discussion so far .

 

[EspaDa]

I started to love Sonic Youth.

 

[H.P. Lovecraft]

No problem, I was just perplexed when you started talking about "your songwriting" being that I'm no songwriter. I can agree with that, because it does eventually boil down to "different strokes for different folks" seeing as there's no such thing as objective musical or artistic taste. You do you, I'll take care of me. I am infact a native English speaker, and I work hard to convey myself eloquently. You're by no means a bad English speaker, and I'm sure I'd be atrocious trying my hand at German besides the little I know. And I do agree, you aren't to simply "get it" listening to a Rammstein song for the first time, Till is a decent songwriter after all. That is an admirable part of Till's style, his saying so much with so little and describing horrible things lovingly or with adulation or glee to create contrast. I think there's something to be said for creating a magnificent, long and winding, blazing trail of verbal fire like Dylan does though. No, respect doesn't really equal enjoyment, I can infact attest to that. But that isn't as the much the case with Till and Rammstein for me though. They're my favorite industrial band along with Marilyn Manson. So, I most certainly consider myself a fan of his music and art, just nowhere near as much as Dylan. And, yes, we can more than agree that Babymetal is an abomination. Once again, no problem, I enjoyed our discussion quite thoroughly.

 

[Satanstoenail]

Don't let Peter Cetera get in the way of this exchange. Just hum along while you're both typing your walls of text.

 

[H.P. Lovecraft]

I'm relatively sure we're done with our exchange and that we've agreed to disagree. That, and I wouldn't be caught dead humming along to Peter Cetera unless it's him fronting Chicago.