I was just getting ready to start this thread after pondering it over the weekend, when I came across this thread about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, which gets very close to they key observation I want to make - but I think (hope) mine is different enough to warrant its own thread and to avoid the hijack of that established thread.
Bottom line: I was at a bar and some Linkin Park came on - the guys I was with started slagging it - it was “Crawling in my Skin.” I happen to agree - the song is grating to my ears - but I don’t like the thought of dismissing it out of hand.
Then it hit me - singers like Janis Joplin pushed their voice at least as hard as Chester Bennington of Linkin Park (“crawwwllliiiiinggggg in my skiiiiiiinnnnnnnn” - c’mon, sing it with me everyone!), but there was a key difference: Janis was singing about maturely painful topics - Another Piece of My Heart is about love gone wrong - or at least a dangerous kind of love. Crawling in my Skin evokes a sense of teenage angst similar to when my 8-year-old doesn’t get to watch his cartoons and has a self-righteous hissy fit.
“You don’t understand my pain!!” (no he doesn’t say this - he’s 8! - but that is his point, if you follow…)
“It’s a cartoon - life goes on.”
So, that’s my thesis - I think I don’t like Linkin Park because the pain they try to bring to life is just immature and selfish, especially when compared to other leather-lunged shouters. I haven’t listened to a lot of their stuff - but then again, I have been exposed to a ton on the radio and MTV.
Would this hypothesis serve for some (not all) of emo or mall-punk, too?
Crawling in My Skin is about childhood sexual abuse, not a love gone wrong. As for Linkin Park, I don’t particularly care about them, but they were impressive live (I saw them at Live 8 in Philadelphia).
It’s one of many–MANY–examples of an artist evolving a style honestly, out of his/her life experience, then having a bunch of wannabes “pay tribute” to that hardwon style by adopting it as their own, without actually earning it. See American Idol’s Chris Daughtry for a recent target of such criticism.
I agree that this particular singer can be very grating and I think the OP makes a good point. Screeching is even less pleasant when the lyrics are just so much banality. However, I never could make out the lyrics and so never knew what he was singing about. So I checked them out and I still can’t tell what the source of all his pain and skin crawliness is about (I *believe * you, Mississippienne , I just mean that it’s not evident in the lyrics themselves. I assume you read this factoid somewhere?)
Mississipienne, I didn’t know that. If you do have a cite, it would be helpful, but I am happy to take you at your word.
having said that, the lyrics themselves still read as self-indulgent teen-angsty - if Chester was really going for such a heavy topic, he could’ve done a better job
I find that harsh lyrics typically go down much better with an upbeat melody - think about I’m a Loser or Help by John Lennon/Beatles or Message in a Bottle or countless other songs by the Police.
I also find the screeching style to lack nuance. When Janis was offering another piece of her heart, there was emotional complexity in her delivery, to my ears…
I’ll try to look up a cite soon, but from interviews, etc. the vocalist Chester Bennington is open about having been sexually abused in his childhood and having a later drug problem, both topics incorporated into several Linkin Park songs (c.f. Breaking the Habit). Also, the video for Crawling portrays a young girl being abused by her father (it’s not clear if it’s physical and/or sexual abuse).
This is maybe sort of related to what you’re talking about, WordMan.
One of the radio stations here plays a song by Nickelback incessantly. The lyrics are something like:
Look at this photograph
everytime I do it makes me laugh
how did our eyes get so red
what’s that behind Joey’s head?
… etc etc, basically about looking at old pictures and remembering the days when.
Well, these are kinda trite lyrics, but you know, they get a point across. Reminiscing and whatnot, ok. They tap into a bit of nostalgia in all of us, yeah. The guy singing it sounds like he’s got a bone to pick with a bunch of Hell’s Angels, what?
Yeah, the singing is 100% not connected in any emotive way with the lyrics. The band has a “sound,” and in order to maintain that, they’ve sacrificed artistic expression.
Hearing this song on the radio for the first time, with the super compressed growly, angry voice, was the last nail in the coffin for this band, for me.
Janis was soft when she needed to be, and belting out pain when that’s what she wanted to do. She didn’t have a sound that she tried to conform to for every recording, she sang with her own style and feeling. It’s easy to yell and be angry. It’s expressing other emotions that takes some real skill.
You got it - good example. The fact that the emotions in many cases are over-the-top nu-metal anger just makes it that much more exhausting and more like a tantrum for bands like Linkin Park…
I agree. It just sounds like whining. Poor babies, life must be so rough for them. Do you feel their pain of selling millions of records?
Hmm, let’s see how does it usually go? Oh yeah, quiet verse with lyrics more spoken than sung, then a hard, loud chorus that usually goes “waaaaaaaaaa, waaaaa, yadda, yadda youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, waaaaaa, waaaaaaaa, yadda, yadda meeeeeeeeee!!!”
Don’t get me wrong, I love loud, hard, angry music. But as stated earlier, these kind of bands just sound like they’re throwing temper tantrums like bratty children. Angry bubble-gum pop. Duran Duran with tattoos and scowls.