Back to the OP…
Yeah, some lyrics can kill a good tune, if they’re silly or cliched or just lazy. But for me, they’re less important than the music. No lyrics, no matter how original or smart or funny, can make me listen to a tune that leaves me cold.
My feelings are similar to Dung Beetle’s, with a few exceptions.
I don’t have to be able to understand the lyrics. That’s fine. Slur 'em, write 'em in Gaelic, or just scat the song. No sweat.
If I can understand the lyrics, however, they become an integral part of the song. I keep hoping for someone to do instrumental remakes of some wonderfully-written music that has annoying, obnoxious, or just-plain-bad lyrics. Being a writer, I can put up with a little bit of bad rhyming and misused vocabulary, but after a point it ruins the song for me.
That’s one of the things that put me off rap completely. The lyrics are the song. You can’t escape them. Take away the lyrics and the rhythm, and there’s nothing left. It’s difficult to consider rap “the most important and dynamic musical development of the last thirty years,” when it’s basically a bunch of people with bad grammar and tiny vocabularies chanting their hatred of women and society and their love of violence and “bling-bling.” Nothing innovative there, except being brazen enough to say it out loud in the most offensive way possible.
I think the answer is yes.
For instance, I’m not Republican by a long stretch, nor am I particularly Christian, nor much for military stuff, so many of the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” are not particularly to my taste. I’d have trouble singing, “Our God is marching on,” for instance. But it’s an extraordinarily powerful song, certainly in its melody, and even in some of its lyrics if not in others. Like I said, I’m not Christian, but the line, “As he died to make men holy, let us fight to make men free,” is a real knockout lyric. Same with the first verse:
Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out his vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fearful lightning
of his terrible, swift sword
His truth is marching on
Very Christian, but also extraordinarily great writing, which I can recognize even if I’m skittish about the subject matter.
So you can dislike the lyrics, or at least have mixed feelings about the lyrics, but still be moved by the song.
I’m with the “I don’t care if I don’t understand it, but if I do, it’d better be good” camp. I listen to Japanese stuff most of the time nowadays, and I don’t care that I can’t understand a word (well I do, but not quite enough).
English rap/offensive lyrical stuff really annoys me, though.
I can’t listen to songs that are not in english. I have to be able to follow some of it…
Bad lyrics really, really, reeeaaalllyyy turn me off to song. (but I guess ‘bad’ is really subjective). Even one really bad line is sometimes enough to put me off. That’s one reason I got into instrumental music so heavily.
It’s got nothing to do with subject matter or POV really.
If that’s “incredibly creative”, then I suppose your average 13 year old boy is a genius. :rolleyes:
Face it, Frog, that’s a bunch of juvenile crap.
I thought that was frog’s point
Two words: Moonlight Shadow
The first time I heard this on Dance Dance Revolution 5th Mix, I thought it was positively gorgeous. I couldn’t get enough of it.
I didn’t know what the lyrics were.
I found the lyrics.
I was absolutely repulsed*.
And while the original song’s distrubing enough, why the hell does every DANCE REMIX have to have the exact same effin’ lyrics?? Geez…
Anyway, that’s an extreme case. Generally, I don’t mind lyrics unless they’re unbearably sappy (MacArthur Park, Islands in the Stream, Lady in Red, lots of Christmas songs), full of incomprehensible spewage (You Can’t Hurry Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, that “All I Wanna do” song by Heart), grossly overusing certain words (Barbie Girl, Light My Fire), way, way, waaaaay too blunt with the message (Proud To Be An American, every flippin’ Christmas song ever), or consist mainly of one line repeated roughly 50,000 times (“N’ynevahgunnagetit! Nevaevagunnagetit! N’ynevahgunnagetit! Nevaevagunnagetit! N’ynevahgunnagetit! Nevaevagunnagetit…”). Silly, goofy, trite, uncreative, hard to understand…small potatoes. I’ve never understood why not rhyming is such a gigantic cardinal sin, and I really don’t give a damn about “hooks”, whatever the heck those are.
It can get pretty weird, I admit. I don’t like Barbie Girl or Happy Boys and Girls, but every other song Aqua ever made is fine by me. Constant Craving is the one k.d. Lang song I can’t listen to. I’ve read complaints about Believe and Hey Ya being repetitive, but I find the latter quite enjoyable and the former at least passable, and I don’t find them a tenth as repetitive as some real stinkers (N’ynevahgunnagetit! Nevaevagunnag SHUT THE HELL UP!! :mad: ).
If the music’s great, I at least try to tolerate the lyrics. Failing that, I just don’t listen too closely.
Japanese or Korean lyrics, thankfully, are not an issue, mainly because they usually don’t even make sense when translated into English, so if the song is beautiful, that’s all that matters. (Seriously, is Rislim about a heartbroken young woman or a power failure? 
)
Interesting note…the two genres where I’ve never heard objectionable lyrics are punk and heavy metal. And this doens’t surprise me at all. Hmm…
[QUOTE=SlyFrog]
But for the purposes of this thread, I’m talking about the stupid debased material with offensive lyrics that I still enjoy to some degree.
Of course, on the side, I do disgaree with the standard, “You’re painting with too broad a brush,” answer as well. What most people listen to is the mainstream. What I listen to is the mainstream. Almost any argument can be dismissed by saying, “Yeah, there’s this one group in New York that does rap that actually is intelligent.” That’s great, I’ll admit that if I want to go scurry to some independent record store and look for some rap that 99 out of 100 people won’t have heard of, there could be some non-stupid debased material in it.
[QUOTE]
cough cough Listen to mainstream rock lyrics much? Suck just as much:
“I love the way you look at me
I love the way you smack my ass
I love the dirty things you do
I have control of you”
Yeah. And we have poetry there, huh? Gimme those crunk lyrics anyday. 95% of mainstream music is stupid debased crap.
Sample—Well, sounds like you’re a rockist. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but your approach to rap is through rock music. If your ear is for rock—for melody and harmony—then you’re never going to like rap, because that’s not what the musical form is about. You cannot approach rap with rock standards. It’s like trying to approach Hindi or Chinese music with Western standards. I will never buy the argument that rap is not music. I’m a musician. I’m formally trained in both classical and jazz, and while I don’t want to argue from authority, IMHO I can state without a shadow of a doubt that rap is music. But, hey, we shouldn’t hijack this thread…
First, I’m willing to bet you’ll find much more of that in rap than mainstream pop, pound for pound. I’m even willing to say that the lyrics I posted are considerably worse than the ones you posted.
Second though, and more importantly, is anyone here championing mainstream rock or pop as having wonderful lyrics?
You are correct sir. I guess I didn’t turn up the sarcasm projector to a high enough level when I posted it.
In the words of Bluto Blutarski… sorry. :smack:
I did think you were being serious, Frog, probably because I think lyrics can be stupid, offensive, debased, playful, and highly creative at the same time. A lot of good punk is like that.
pulykamell, you’re pretty much right. I’m not a rockist – also a fan of old-time country, pure percussion, certain jazz genres, nightclub (Sara Vaughan makes me want to have her children when she sings), classical guitar, bossa nova, and other forms… and mainstream radio rock leaves me cold – but yes, it’s the rap form itself that turns me off. I could say the same of techno/dance.
I’m not one of those who thinks rap’s “not music” (my eldest brother is of this opinion, but that may have more to do with his outspoken bigotry than anything else). It’s just music I dislike.
Maybe I should have said “in my opinion all of it sucks”, but I thought that was implicit – how could any musical genre be objectively bad?
For me, it boils down to this (re OP): Bad lyrics can ruin a good tune, but even great lyrics can’t salvage a bad one.
OK. Well that I can respect. Carry on…