Do People Care About Hearing Lyrics Anymore?

Cafe Society
1

Okay, this is going to make me seem incredibly old, and let’s face it, that’s what I’m becoming, but seriously, when it comes to today’s music, do the lyrics even matter anymore?

I recently listened to this collection of songs on YouTube, and I tried to appreciate it for what the songs were trying to say. One or two were trying to make a statement, such as Black Eyed Peas “Where is the Love?”, but even then, the familiar rap sounds just worked against any real comprehension of what the lyrics were trying to say. When every rap song sounds like the next one, the songs just sort of blend into a background white noise. Is that what the artists are aiming for? Why? Why not aim to make the song more memorable? Why not make it stand out from the others?

The other songs that are not rap seem to be trying to make the human voices unintelligible so as to highlight the sound of the voices over the meaning of the words the voices are saying. Sort of like the singing voices are just another instrument in the band instead of the main feature of the song. Am I right about this, or am I just listening with old people ears?

I can sing from memory songs from the twentieth century by listening to them a few times, but I would have to read the lyrics from these songs to commit them to memory. All I hear from most of them is “aba-aba-shake-it-baybe-baybe-oobah-oobah” and on and on. It sounds like gibberish. Some is catchy gibberish, but nothing that I would want to sing to myself.

Okay, I’m not trying to say that music from my younger days was better, but…well, maybe I am. I’m trying to like what’s out there. But I’m not finding much that has memorable lyrics. And if the lyrics aren’t memorable, I won’t remember the song.

Or should I just consider today’s music as verbal-instrumental, and try to recall it like the songs “Wipeout” or “Classical Gas”?

2

There are now, as there have always been, listeners who care about the lyrics and listeners who don’t; songs that have something to say and songs that don’t have any ambitions beyond “it has a good beat and you can dance to it.”

3

That’s exactly the same argument old people made in the fifties against that crazy fad called “Rock’n’Roll”. So same old same old. But I can feel with you, because I’m an old fart too and every time I get stabby for some seemingly new-fangled annoyance, I’m thinking about my teenage days and notice: “Shit, I’m becoming my parents.” :wink:

4

You answered your own questions by the time you finished the word “becoming.”

You’re too old to understand the words. Of course they matter - to young people. Not you.

There has never been a time, ever, when most popular music had particularly original or interesting lyrics. Interesting lyrics has always been the exception. Most of the music of your youth was insipid garbage.

5

Sometimes musicians record music, not songs. I have dozens of albums with no lyrics at all, but I don’t think the likes of Al DiMeola or Pat Metheny are out to record catchy tunes with a good danceable beat.

6

Err… what? I wouldn’t say that this is even close to true.

And interestingly, I’d say the rise of rap music has made people even more aware of the lyrics than they used to be. You even have sites like Rap Genius which is involved in annotating lyrics of rap songs.

7

As has been said, as much today as they ever did, and the lyrics are just as unintelligible as back in the day. That’s why I’m so surprised at the overwhelming popularity of Hamilton. I’ve tried several times to listen to it and I can only sporadically make out the words. Not always a huge deal on the dance floor but when the whole narrative lies in the lyrics it would be helpful to understand what they are.

8

[QUOTE=Cab Calloway]
When your sweetie tells you
Everything’ll be okay
Just skeep-beep de bop-bop beep bop bo-dope
Skeetle-at-de-op-de-day

If you feel like shoutin’
Advertise it just this way
And skeep-beep de bop-bop beep bop bo-dope
Skeetle-at-de-op-de-day
[/QUOTE]
…

9

The words in rap songs are different, but the sound and rhythm of rap songs sounds the same to me.

Sort of like all on one note: Dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-didit-DOT. Over and over through the whole song.

10

“He says hep hep with helium
Now babe, we’re cookin
Another expression’s too it
He says, we’re in the groove
And the groove is good lookin
Sounds like his uppers don’t fit!”

11

I don’t listen to top 40, pointless songs.

That said, every time that I’ve read the lyrics to a song - any song - I’ve not been impressed. I’m not a big poetry fan, as it is, and almost no lyrics even live up to the potential of being poetry. The lyricist almost always ends up having to repeat a refrain excessively, reducing the “length” of the poem by anywhere from a third to a half, and each line is too short to form a meaningful thought.

Traditionally, music was probably matched up to poetry, after the fact. I would presume that this made the music more like a movie soundtrack, backing the reading with a particular mood, but not really interfacing with it.

Doing it the other way around, it doesn’t seem to be possible to do much better than getting a few key words out there strong enough, to give a vague sense of what the topic is, and not much more. And that includes people straight-up reading through the lyrics.

And beyond that, most musicians are idiots. The ones who put more effort into putting a “message” into their song are more often putting a stupid message into their song. If I paid attention, I’d probably want to throw the CD (if there were still CDs) into the wall.

Dessa (a rapper, btw), is a published poet and if you look at her stuff, clearly there’s a difference compared to your average song lyrics:

But still I would say that the individual lines are too short to be great poetry. Maybe if everyone wrote lyrics as well as her, I’d listen in and follow the song. But they aren’t, and so my brain has trained itself to ignore lyrics.

Overall, I think that if you want something like song lyrics, then you should read poetry. Otherwise, singers are probably better to just make pleasing noises that are in-tune to the song. It’s already all gibberish to me, and 99% of the time it has only gone downhill when it stopped being so.

12

Pop lyrics have never been required listening, IMHO. When you move on to more… adult genres, the words start to become important.

13

Remember that beat combination which had the most idiotic lyrics? “Yeah yeah yeah”, all the time, about love and hand-holding and other inanities? They were from England, someplace, I believe… rather outré hair styles, if I remember…

Anyway, they weren’t a patch on real, adult music, such as the intelligent lyricism of Cab Calloway. Now excuse me while I kick the gong around.

14

Real, adult music for adults is written by people who win major awards for the lyrics themselves.

15

Yep, I’m a Dylan fan as well.

16

Tom Waits.
Kathleen Brennan.
John Prine.
Kris Kristofferson.
Randy Newman.

Which leads you to:
Guy Clark.
Shel Silverstein.
Johnny Cash.

Which pretty much gets you away from wailing clotheshorses with too much makeup and too big an entourage, whose lyrics are as deep as… Foreigner’s. On a good day.

17

Anymore? I never did.

In reality, more often than not, learning the words usually ruins a song for me. Because they are usually stupid. Very few lyrics enhance the song for me. The voice is just another instrument. I don’t care about the dumb stories they are trying to tell me.

18

“Kick the gong around” was 1930s (I think) slang for “smoke opium.”

19

A lot of vocabulary in Hip Hop songs, it appears;
http://lab.musixmatch.com/vocabulary_genres/
followed by Heavy Metal, of all things.
Both genres seem to require a lot of words to describe their respective areas of interest, even if those areas do not appeal to everyone.

20

Adele
Over 792,000,000 views

Ed Sheeran
Over 1,419,000,000 views

Enough said.