Ah, but with style.
The Partridge Family??
Why am I the first one to nominate “Hotel California”?
Thank you! I agree 100%. I hate songs about being a star, or worse yet, songs about writings songs.
I make an exception for Elton John’s “Your Song” though, because he was just a kid when he wrote it and it feels very sincere.
I know I’ll get shot for this one, but I find John Lennon’s “Imagine” pretty hard to take.
A sub-thread/category digression I’d like to make: It always annoys me when there is new material on someone’s greatest hits album. I feel like phoning up the artist and explaining to him who it is that decides which of his songs are hits at all, let alone great ones.
No, no, no!
I loved that post I quoted. Although, David Cassidy did decorate my walls when I was younger.
I nominate “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. The world is turning and we’re all learning and my biscuits are burning…deep stuff.
I am music. And I write the songs; I write the songs that make the whole world sing.
^This.
I think what adds to the lyrical pretension is how often the music is so overwrought, created by great musicians playing sophisticated techniques and compositions, which (to my ear) are overelaborate and in the attempt fail at what they’re trying to do–i.e., make something grand and great. As a genre, the work feels inorganic, busy-for-the-sake-of-being-busy, and comically affected at its worst. It’s a great, big stew of “Listen to my genius!” cooked up by musicians that generally can’t pull it off, because they don’t understand that great songs are not great because of their complexity or the impenetrability of the lyrics. As a style, it is the very definition of musical pretension.
Compare them to the Beatles (I know, that’s not a fair fight for anyone), who also used great technique and sophisticated compositional techniques–but the average listener didn’t even notice. They’re just great tunes (that’s what I mean by organic). I’m a musician and I know they’re great, and so does my mom who knows nothing about music. To quote Dave Grohl, “Even in Nirvana — the Beatles [were] such a huge influence,” he said. “Kurt loved The Beatles because it was just so simple. “Well, it seemed simple… they sound easy to play, but you know what? They’re [expletive] hard!” he added.
Prog Rock? Those songs don’t sound easy to play (they’re not), but the complexity is often just masturbatory.
Much as I love “Born This Way”, Gaga throws in a handful of nationalities but emphasizes how wonderful to be born gay, because ‘God doesn’t make mistakes and you are just so F’ing wonderful exactly the way you are’…OK. But I know of a few people who aren’t Lebanese, Orient, or gay/bi/transgendered. They are black or white, sure, and suffer from heartbreaking, painful, hideous disabilities. They were born that way, and they aren’t out dancing and squealing over their fabulousness. The unfairness of their sad lives as they struggle day after day is not helped by a rousing disco anthem celebrating their specialness. Being ‘born that way’ can really suck.
Another song I find pretentious - now - “This Is The End” by The Doors. One of the most melancholy pretentious downer songs of all time. A tale of Oedipus related in a sonorous voice! Ride the snake! Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain! All the children are insane!.. Wow, man! Not that I don’t still enjoy this song in the proper setting
, either, but somebody worked really hard on being the P word, back in the 60’s.
The payola guys? 
As someone who has a fair amount of prog in his collection-both old school (Yes, Crimson, Floyd), as well as some newer stuff (Nightwish, Porcupine Tree, who aren’t really “prog” very often)…there is a fairly thin line there. On the one side of the line, is a song which doesn’t try too hard, is put together well, has a fair amount of complexity, but doesn’t sell out the rock side too much, such as “Roundabout”. A cut like that works because it is cohesive, not overcomplex, and as such the themes are pretty memorable (such as Steve Howe’s introductory guitar chords). It helps if the musicians in question have the chops to pull it off, too-many think they do, but few actually can.
On the other hand, if that line is crossed, you end up with something like Tales of Topographic Oceans, which is where the vultures you alluded to come home to roost. I tried a neo-prog band yesterday called Transatlantic, a 26 minute long cut called “Stranger in Your Soul” (from 2001)…and it was all too much. The self-conscious aping of all of the usual prog cliches, empty of any real soul or vibe or original vision. Virtuosity just for the sake of virtuosity, pandering to a small cult following who eat that kind of shit up, unquestioningly. No thanks.
I hope you’re including “Late Lament” as part of NIWS:
Breathe deep, the gathering gloom blah blah blah blah…
mmm
Kansas – The Closet Chronicles
Example
Local H’s “All The Kids Are Right” seemed to pull it off.
You heard that we were great
But now you think we’re lame
Since you saw the show last night
You hoped that we would rock
And knock it up a notch
Rockin’ was nowhere in sight
I actually kind of like “Roundabout,” but at the risk of invoking the True Scotsman fallacy, I’d say that’s because (and I think you’re saying this) it moves closer to the straight-ahead-rock-tune end of the spectrum and farther from the prog rock end. No, I won’t go so far as to say it isn’t prog rock, but like most prog rock tunes I like at all, it dials down the worst excesses. IOW, what I like about it aren’t the prog rock elements; I like the cool bass riff and the straightforward drive of the verse (which doesn’t have a lot going on, chord-wise, to muddy it up with pseudo-jazz or -classical pretensions). But, as is typical, they clog it up with a some really silly lyrics, and it has way too many breaks and consequently goes on way too long. Brevity is not Yes’s strong suit.
To use the Beatles again as a reference point, “Strawberry Fields Forever” is a great tune, but would not have been if it was 10 minutes long with several superfluous dirge-like breaks inserted for good measure. Or maybe it would have been if the Beatles did it. They knew how to make things sounds simple and flowing and (to re-use the word) organic. Their songs are as long as they need to be to produce a great tune. Yes’s songs tend to be as long as they need to be to fit in all the stuff they want to fit in, whether the song needs it or not. They don’t know how to edit out the unnecessary stuff.
But I agree with you, a song which doesn’t try too hard can be okay, but “not trying too hard” isn’t typically the default, and the more they dial it down, the less prog-rockish it is, IMO.
The Adverts’ One Chord Wonders was pretty charming in its honesty:
Pink Floyd’s Welcome To The Machine, on the other hand, ought to be beaten with sticks: kindergarten lyrics complaining about how much being a fabulously wealthy rock star in the 70s sucked, set to seven minutes of soporific blues noodling.
Hmm… I dunno, over-the-top bombastic =/= pretentious necessarily.
I dunno, Imagine by John Lennon?
If not, I don’t know what the hell “pretentious” means in a music context. The obvious choice is classical music, given the decorum, performance environment, and those who enjoy it.
In a rock context, it seems kinda meaningless.
I love Bob Dylan but I gotta nominate “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. There are times when I think he was just making it up as he went along in a weird solitaire version of Mad Libs.
“I met a …white man who…walked …a black dog.”
“Heard the sound of …a clown who…cried…in an alley”
“I saw …guns and sharp swords…in the…hands…of young children”
I could go on . I honestly wish I could find depth and meaning in this iconic song and God knows I’ve tried but I usually end up giggling.
Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead Or Alive (rockstars are just like cowboys, man!) or Livin’ On A Prayer (it’s about the struggle of da’ working man from Jersey!)
Or any 80s-90s band who made videos of themselves performing in leather jackets and Ray-Bans, intercut with “poignant” scenes of troubles in the Third World (U2, Midnight Oil, Peter Gabriel, etc. etc.)
I can get behind a lot of what you guys have suggested, esp prog. But…
How about Don McLean’s song, American Pie? Though I’ve read the (over) analysis of the lyrics, isn’t it just a bunch of thoughts strung together like the OP was looking for?