is a great line…I think some of fun uses of big words include:
- Young MC, Bust a Move
(with bonus points for the use of the word “perpetrating” within that context ;))
Look, for those defending Sting - please, be happy. He is a talented musician and erudite wordsmith. I happen to have only so much room for erudition in my pop music and find that Sting crosses that line way too often - no biggie, but not my cuppa. Young MC’s rap above is funny has an amazing flow and the mechanics of the words within the flow, coupled with their meaning, makes them just work. They don’t sound forced or that he is even trying to impress you with big words - he’s just telling a story. Having august Mr. Sumner invoke Scylla and Charybdis or Nabokov just doesn’t come off as anything other than academic and calculated to my ear, which I equate with pretentious. No need to defend - I am just trying to differentiate why Cream and Young MC work for me and Sting really doesn’t.
And who the hell are you to mandate that lyrics in pop must be simplified to their lowest common denominator? You must love Steve Miller with his “Abracadabra. gonna reach out and grab ya.” Please if that’s “correct”, then by all means give me pretentious.
My own dislike of Sting/The Police has little to do with their lyrics. I dislike them for much the same reason I dislike UB40 and late Led Zeppelin: skinny white guys doing reggae. Rush even poked fun at that with the reggae section they stuck into The Spirit of Radio. And the critics suddenly loved something Rush had done, apparently not catching on that Rush was mocking them with that song.
I first heard Rush’s “Cygnus X-1, Book II: Hemispheres” when I was 14-15 years old. That piece uses characters from Greek mythology, with whom I was largely unfamiliar at the time, but I was still able to immediately understand the story that was being told. I head the Police’s Wrapped Around Your Finger when I was a bit older, and never could figure out what Sting was going on about. Why the difference? Neil Peart introduces the Greek characters, and describes them and their function in the story he’s telling. The Police song sticks Greek mythology references into the lyrics in a way that assumes the listener is already familiar with the source material, an unwarranted assumption when the typical rock audience is comprised of stoned high schoolers. I know my high school education didn’t spend a lot of time on Greek mythology.
Whoa there, big fella; I am just trying to play within the rules of the OP - they were looking for discussions of pretentiousness. I offered an example and explain why - but I make it clear that YMMV.
And again: I love a good big words used well. To cite an example, upthread I offer a quote where sadistic, materialistic and opportunistic are all nice, big words that I feel were used well. And I think making references to big ideas and mythological characters can work in pop, too - I just don’t think that the example of Sting’s I reference is one that works.
Fancy Words <> quality…sometimes they are just big words.
I don’t find the example from “Wrapped Around Your Finger” pretentious.
It’s just more bad rhyming from the same man who gave us:
“It’s too late, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov.”
You’re making my point: it’s not that he’s citing Nabokov, per se, it is that he is doing it in a bad rhyme/lyric that makes it come across as pretentious…
To me, fancy words badly used = forced/pretentious. There are other examples of Sting’s lyrics that do NOT sound forced or pretentious.
A-fucking-men. Personally, I enjoy a lot of prog for its musicianship and themes that are a bit out of the ordinary; it goes beyond girls, rockin’, partyin’, cars, California, and the like. However, the style is far more prone to “musical masturbation” than other styles of rock.
Prog is kind of like the SDMB of music; its performers and fans often liken themselves to being intellectuals who are smarter, more analytical, more introspective and more cultured than the the norm. The themes often found in prog mirror popular topics on the SDMB: science, the meaning of life, the glories of the Medieval age, fantasy and adventure, and so on. It’s more male-oriented than other forms of rock, both in the makeup of the bands and their fans. Heavy metal also gets hit with the pretentious label from time to time, and it too is more male-oriented.
But see, that’s the problem: Why is musicianship in rock held to a different (read: “lower”) standard than musicianship in other styles of music? Here’s a musical style (“rock & roll”) that’s been around for almost 60 years, yet a large segment of the population — critics and fans alike — seem to feel that rock musicians shouldn’t be getting “above their station”, and that they should hew closer to the simple blues roots of rock. Nobody that I’ve heard accuses Yo Yo Ma or Chick Corea of “musical masturbation”. But when rock musicians try to do the same thing, they get this, “Hey, play three chords, keep it short, and make sure you can dance to it! What do you think you are, musicians or something?” business.
I agree to some extent; musicians should be able to show off. However, I think it becomes an issue to purists when they drift away from their style too much, rather than innovate within it. Consider the derision of country music purists towards the more glurgey, rock-oriented contemporary country acts. They do seem more accepting of Austin-style rock/country fusion, though, perhaps because it’s a bit “grittier” and more acoustic, closer to the roots of rock, country and blues.
IMHO, prog starts to feel pretentious when there’s a fusion with classical music, not exactly an accessible genre that is seen as “music of the people”. Again, think of Rick Wakeman, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Keith Emerson solo works, and the like.
And that goes back to the “middlebrow” thing I mentioned a few posts back. The term “middlebrow” was coined in the mid or late 19th century and was applied mainly to visual arts. Back then, viewing paintings and sculptures and the like was something the upper-crust folks did, but not so much the working- and middle-class people. Some American artists starting creating these things, but depicted subjects that the middle-class could more easily relate to and enjoy, and this was somewhat frowned upon by the “highbrow” types. They felt these artists were dumbing down “true art” for the uneducated masses. But it accomplished what the artists intended: the “common man” took an interest in art that he may have never taken otherwise because the extant art was considered “above” him.
Same thing with incorporating classical elements into rock. Thanks to these rock artists, I know lots of hardcore rock fans who also have a very real appreciation for “classical” music (and jazz, too) — music they never would have given a second listen to without the influence of this kind of rock.
Without prog, I would probably have never appreciated Hiromi Uehara:
This is going to be little mean, but if someone wants “objective” reasons why their favorite music sucks, it’s self-indicting. It’s impossible to “objectively” show that any art is good or bad. If you don’t understand that, you probably won’t understand why someone thinks the music you like is superficial.
But to give a less general answer, I’ll sometimes roll my eyes at music that articulates an concept rather than makes me feel an emotion.
F’rinstance I can tolerate Rush intellectualizing about integrity vs commerce in Spirit of Radio (?) because the music’s good. When they tell me a moralistic fable in Trees it’s annoying because
–I’m not emotionally involved.
–The tune ain’t that great
–They aren’t telling me anything new
–Geddy overplays the intensity rather than underplays it. (To use a non-objective term, it’s bombastic.)
Huh. I apparently, tragically, LOVE most of the pretentious groups mentioned here. I grew up listening to most of them. They added enjoyment and a little…magic to my life. How did I ever go so wrong? I should have loved some ugly, unintelligible, whining junkies who were more “real”.
First off, I want to say that I knew a thread on pretentious musicians would feature Sting prominently.
I’m kind of surprised no one else has pointed out (unless I missed it) that neither Scylla nor Charybdis was a rock or a hard place. They were sea monsters, Scylla resembling a demon and Charybdis being a whirlpool. This is where we get the phrase “between the devil and the deep blue sea,” a phrase that describes this particular dilemma more closely than “between a rock and a hard place.” Later in the song, the phrase “devil and the deep blue sea behind me,” completes the metaphor of the apprentice overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles to best the teacher.
For some people, this explanation just makes the whole thing more pretentious (and perhaps sucks me into the whirlpool of pomposity along with Sting). For me, it elevates the phrase out of pretentiousness and makes it really clever and memorable.
Gotta agree about the master/alabaster couplet though. That’s the thing about Sting: one minute he’s on a roll with “Loose talk in the classroom/
To hurt they try and try/Strong words in the staffroom/The accusations fly” and the next thing you know, he’s rhyming “cough” and “Nabokov”. And not in a good way.
You want to rhyme with “master”. How many freaking songs already grab for the obvious rhyme “faster”? What does one do? Obviously expand the vocabulary.
When I first tried to write lyrics I found upon readback that so much of it sounded horrible because of the inclination to use common rhymes. So I worked backwards. I found words that sounded interesting, or were not commonly used.
it forces one to really think. And after all , a lyricist should be writing for themselves, not for others.
Quite frankly, if someone can’t be bothered to open up a dictionary if they hear a word they’re not familiar with - fuck 'em. Why cater to that lowest common denominator? What do you achieve?
Also, what about prog recorded in other languages? I listen to some of those bands and I don’t understand word-one. Unlike the Sting example, one can’t be expected to learn a whole language to appreciate lyrics. Does this mean I can’t appreciate the music either? Is it pretentious to enjoy foreign music?
Fact of the matter is that lots of times I don’t want to be toe-tappin’ in 4/4. I enjoy non-standard rhythms, much more so than 4/4 8/8. Does this make me pretentious? Hell no.
Good point. My understanding is that the “rock and hard place” metaphor derives from a different Greek story, that of Jason and the Argonauts passing through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks) and later the similar Planctae (Wandering Rocks). To complicate matters further, the sea route through the Planctae itself represents an alternative to the route between Scylla and Charybdis; Jason chose the former and Odysseus the latter.
But I think the key distinction is that Scylla and Charybdis are two separate hazards; the conundrum is that the more one skirts one danger, the closer one comes to the other. The Sympleglades and Planctae, on the other hand, are simply hazardous paths; there’s no choice, no minimizing any part of the danger, except to avoid the situation entirely.
As literate metaphors, then, these should properly be applied to different circumstances. If you want to describe two unpleasant or risky choices, or different dangers coming from either side, that’s Scylla and Charybdis (or “devil and the deep blue sea”). Being “between a rock and hard place,” on the other hand, is simply a tough spot which will take luck or skill to get through.
It’s certainly understandable that the two stories and metaphors would be confused, though. Both involve passing “between.” Odysseus, though he avoids the Planctae, does traverse the Symplegades. And to top it off, some versions of the S&C story have Scylla seated on a rock; there are at least two real rocks which have been “identified” as that rock. But, strictly speaking, Scylla’s rock was never the “rock” which opposed the “hard place.”
I can give my take on that, being a fan of Japanese rock singer (though she’s not prog). I treat her music as instrumental music, with her voice being simply the lead instrument in her band. It helps that she’s not one of those Japanese singers who constantly injects gratuitous English words into her lyrics. I don’t understand Japanese beyond domo arigato and konichiwa, and one of the things that drew me to her music was her ability to accurately convey the emotional content of her lyrics even to somebody who doesn’t understand a word she’s singing. That was confirmed for me when I located some English translations of a few of her songs and discovered that the emotions she evoked in me as the songs progressed perfectly followed the mood set by the lyrics.
As a bass player, I get hella bored chugging along in 4/4 all the time. I love that complex, odd-meter stuff.