It truly depends on the song. Sometimes the lyrics are the whole point of the song, other times they are entirely inconsequential.
As for lyrics that don’t fit the tone, my go-to example is most of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” album. The title track, Darlington County, Working on the Highway, Bobby Jean, Dancing in the Dark, and Glory Days are all peppy, upbeat tunes whose lyrics tell depressing, even disturbing, stories.
[QUOTE=pulykamell]
I feel that nonsense syllables are an instrument and music of their own. To me, there’s room for both kinds of music–lyric driven and not. And even if you don’t understand the words, or they don’t make any sense, they can be emotive in their own right by the sounds they make.
[/QUOTE]
I can appreciate this sometimes, but it irks me not to be able to sing along. If I really like such a song, inevitably I will look up and memorize the lyrics and read their translation so I have some clue what I’m singing about. Madonna’s Shanti-Ashtangi. is one such example.
I just really like words.
It should be noted that I thoroughly enjoy some songs with incredibly stupid, mundane lyrics. I’m not trying to be a lyric snob, here. I love Rush, in part due to their lyrics, but one of my favorite Rush songs is ‘Working Man,’ which is not deep.
It’s the way these lyrics are sung that moves me. Oooh, and that guitar groove. (Actually, Rush, and classic rock in general, is a good example of music where I can deal with longer periods that have no lyrics. I think YYZ is a great song, for example. I couldn’t deal with that for an entire album, though.)
My favorite are nonsensical lyrics in the vein of REM’s ''What’s the frequency, Kenneth?" or the bizarro raps of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. For most clever lyrics, I’d go with Eve 6 or Cake. Cake is the best example of lyrics that sound nonsense but are usually pretty profound.
For example, in ‘‘Sheep Go to Heaven, Goats Go to Hell,’’ what sounds like a silly, funky tune is really a showdown between hedonism and Calvinist-style ascetecism. It contains the seemingly random line
[QUOTE=Cake]
The gravedigger puts on the forceps
The stonemason does all the work
[/QUOTE]
Which turns out to be a reference to Waiting for Godot.
[QUOTE=Waiting for Godot]
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries.
[/QUOTE]
I love stuff like that, which is full of hidden gems.
These songs are new to me. There’s always this upbeat cautionary tale about one of America’s most beloved heroes barely surviving a vicious attack. Timeless, I’d say.
I grew up with Broadway showtimes, so of course I pay attention to the lyrics the first time around.
The International Standard Recording Code has a database containing over 20-million songs. A million new ones added every year, so many that they have had to reformat the exhausted numbering system. How many of those can possibly be worth listening critically to the lyrics of, and what are your chances of finding one worthwhile set of lyrics in a ramdom selection?
I always listen closely to the lyrics. I fancy myself a songwriter (I’ve written two in fifty-one years; I’m a slow starter) so how else am I going to blatantly steal from … I mean be inspired by my favorite song-writers if I don’t pay attention to the lyrics.
Never. I’m not much of a music guy, but it’s the melody that hits me first. Lyrics don’t matter, they’re just a blob of filler. It may be tens of listens before I realise what the words are actually saying.
Pen pineapple apple pen.
By that same logic, how many of those can possibly be worth listening critically to the music of?