Wait - I go on a biz trip (at the airport as I type) go to check this thread on pretentiousness in music and not only is there resentfully-toned pushback against my non-mean-spirited reference to Sting, the poster boy for pretention, but people are debating the meaning of “b/t scylla and charybdis” and its use in a pop song vs. just acknowledging that it is an obscure (and pretentious) reference to most pop music listeners? Oh, the irony…
In your view, are all works which require exegesis to fully appreciate pretentious, or just song lyrics?
If a song is packaged and marketed as a pop song and requires exegesis - yeah, I will go with pretentious.
To be clear: when I put this BBerry down, I will pick up the book I am reading: Lords of the Sea by John Hale, about the emergence of Athens as a sea power and the influence of that on their early efforts at democracy. I love me some erudite stuff - but in the right place…
But why is a book the ‘right place’ for erudition, but a popular song isn’t? I’m trying to understand why one would assert that properly employed but inobvious references in a popular medium are objectionable. It actually makes it less clear to me that you don’t have the same objections to the practice in different contexts.
Shakespeare comes to mind as an example of a writer of popular entertainments whose work, even in Elizabethan London, assumed a level of education and classical knowledge most of his audience wouldn’t have had.
As I said earlier, “pompousness” is an attitude, an attitude that can be conveyed in all kinds of media by all kinds of acts. ANY performer whose manner and body language proclaim “I am an ARTIST! Hear my message, and hang on my every word” is repulsively pompous- but that attitude is no more comon among art-rockers than among artists in any other genre. A folk singer with only an acoustic guitar can be unbearably pompous, while a rock band backed by a full orchestra may not be. It all depends on the feeling that the performer projects.
To use one example, the Moody Blues often perform with local symphony orchestras. But they don’t come across as pompous. That’s partly because Justin Hayward, John Lodge and Graeme Edge are pretty nice, laid-back guys who clearly don’t take themselves too seriously, and partly because the Moodies started off as a pop/R & B group and only gradually adopted the trappings and styles of art-rock. Fundamentally, the Moody Blues have always been closer to Gerry and the Pacemakers than to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Strip away the string section from “Nights in White Satin,” and you’re still left with a very pretty song.
THAT’S a good way to start judging a prog-rock band. Underneath the string section and the church organ and the mellotron and the triple-deck synthesizers, are the SONGS any good?
Beyond that, consider what a band is trying to accomplish, and then decide whether they succeeded. In THEORY, a band like ELP was mixing classical and rock music in the hope that the end result would have both the fun/energy of Chuck Berry AND the beauty/majesty of Bach. Did they succeed? Or did they end up with something that had the fun/energy of Bach and the beauty/Majesty of Chuck Berry? (My answer: Both! I loved what they did with Bartok and Ginastera, but slept through “Fanfare for the Common Man.”)
Or does its repeated use by British artists indicate that its obscurity is limited to American audiences and their far less classical educations?
Here’s the different problem I see while reading this thread. The stuff that people are pointing out as lyrics that they don’t like should better be thought of as bad art. Bad art can be silly and simple or can be complex and ponderous. (Or can be many additional things or combinations of things. Bad art is bottomless and far easier to produce and find than good art.)
Go back to the OP and you see a complaint that complex bad art isn’t simply called bad art, it’s given the name pretentious. That epithet has slopped over to complex good art as well. And that is an anti-intellectual reflex.
I admit to a bias toward interesting word use in songs. I really like Sting and Paul Simon and Steely Dan and bunches of others. I was sorry when Bruce Springsteen abandoned his early wordiness for simpler lyrics. But I like them because their tunes are equally good. And I like lots of pop confections with simple or silly lyrics because the melodies are so catchy. I don’t think of the songs with big words and unmemorable tunes as pretentious. I think of them as bad.
It’s badly hurt rock over the years that headbanging and noise and anti-establishment postures have become the equivalent of the One True Religion. Rock can be complex and classical and jazzy and quiet and pretty and pleasant. When you start defining all those things out of Rock, you’re cutting away blood and tissue, not calcified plaque.
**'Xap **- I have no argument with your post, nor with **astorian’s ** and really nor with xenophon’s. I love smart wordplay and smart words in my music.
astorian - if you (and others) are cool with saying “fine - okay: Sting is a pompous douchebag in how he presents himself - and also happens to be a great, wordy songwriter - but sometimes when his pompousness overlaps with his songwriting, we end up with songs like Wrapped Around Your Finger…”
Cool? 
(I know - folks have argued that nothing is wrong with the Scylla and Charybdis reference - yeah, it would be great if the *hoi polloi *were better read, but…)
So… as long as we concede that you’re right about the song in question, you’ve no disagreement with our different definitions, is that it?
I’ll certainly admit that Sting has approached pomposity -and perhaps even douchebaggery- several times over his career, but I can’t see anything pompous or pretentious in this particular song.
The problem is, the obscurity of a reference doesn’t in and of itself make for pretentiousness. For instance, the discussion regarding Scylla and Charybdis seems to have produced at least a small consensus that it is used correctly. I think it fits not only the tone but the specifics of the song, and is reinforced by the parallel reference to “devil and the deep blue sea.” If there’d been some presentation of the song as a profound statement or as high art of some sort, that would’ve been pretentious, but as it is we have some literate word choices and classical references used cleverly in an unabashed pop song. IMHO, yay.
Yeah - I would say that in this case, we’ve agreed to disagree. I see your argument, but still think the song and reference is pretentious. But, since I have already acknowledged that I see Sting as a pompous douchebag who is also very talented, it is easy to see how I am predisposed to think that.