Popular music is as much about the lyrics as it is about the music. Not many artists in the popular genre can get away with instrumental music because people need the lyrics or in other words, they need something they can relate to and something to sing out loud at a concert or in the shower. Most of the popular music today saw a great decline in the quality of lyrics and it got me thinking about the different types of writing in the popular genre and how it relates to mine. So, here we go, the (DE)CONSTRUCTING OF THE SONG LYRIC.
(this is a snap from one of the stories in Woody Allen's ''to Rome With Love'' about a man who can only sing when in the shower)
LYRICS THEN, LYRICS NOW
To be perfectly clear, I'm not saying that the past tense is better than the present, I'm just saying that things have changed. Of course, there was always ''a bit of this and a bit of that'' but it seems that the complexity of the lyrics in pop music is on the decline because the audiences also change over time.
I grew up mostly listening to artists that would best fit the rock/alternative genre even though I always believed all of that is pop music. Artists such as Bob Dylan, the Band, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Paul Simon, The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, David Bowie, both Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Sonic Youth, REM, The Violent Femmes, The Cure, the Pixies etc. Most of these artists (some more than the others) took songwriting seriously and paid a lot of attention to the lyrics. Dylan, Reed, Young, Cohen, these are the guys more famous for their lyrics than their music. Cohen was primarily a book author turned musician, Reed wanted to be a book author but turned to lyrics instead, Young also wrote poetry put to music and Dylan recently won a Noble prize for literature. The 80's saw the emergence of new poets such as Ian Curtis, Nick Cave, Laurie Anderson, Einsturzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld or guys like Morrisey and in the 90's guys like Eddie Vedder were regarded as rock poets. These are just a few artists I remembered of the top of my head, but my point is: there were always audiences that cared for meaningful lyrics and those that didn't. I'm not going to get into the whole ''what is meaningful'' discussion but let's just say that writing Tell me why, tell me why/Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself/When you're old enough to repay, but young enough to sell?/ isn't quite the same as writing Right about now/The funk soul brother/Check it out now/The funk soul brother as the lyrics for the entire song. The point agains is: audiences change.
I saw an article on Vice recently entitled Rock is dead, thank God and it talks about how the industry and the audiences changed to push rock away and make way for new genres such as hiphop or EDM. There's nothing wrong with that and it's the natural order of things (to replace something out of fashion with something new) but there was this interesting part in the article that I feel is worth our time: Product placements are a staple of the modern music video, with Miley Cyrus applying EOS lip balm in “We Can’t Stop,” Migos prominently displaying (and singing about) 19 brands like Chanel and Segway in “Bad and Boujee,” and just about everyone shilling for Beats by Dre. One of the most celebrated music videos this year—Spike Jonze's trippy collaboration with FKA twigs—was actually a four-minute commercial for Apple’s HomePod speaker. Companies are marketing so aggressively to younger listeners that branding and its feel-good lifestyle pitches seem omnipresent, which explains why popular music, objectively speaking, sucks ass. To borrow a joke from John Mulaney, every song is about how tonight is the night and we only have tonight. So it’s no wonder festival kids want to listen to songs that sound like commercials. Kids want familiarity. Kids want music to dance and take drugs to. Kids want Galantis. (you can read the article in full here https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/a3aqkj/rock-is-dead-thank-god?utm_source=vicefbuk)
Kids want commercials, familiarity and things to dance to without having to think about it too much. It's just the way it is. Things change.
This is essentially a commercial with 14.360.227 views and I don't think something like this could happen 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Of course, things are not so grim. There are many artists around today that I still enjoy and feel they write good lyrics. One of them is certainly Father John Misty who's album Pure Comedy is one of the best displays of genius lyric writing I have ever had a pleasure to see. To draw a ''sort of conclusion'' on this, we might say that people don't pay as much attention to the lyrics as they used to for the same reason they don't go to operas or Mozart concerts as much as they used to. There simply isn't time. Everything is happening faster, everything is instantly available on your smartphone and people can't afford to sit through an entire 45+ minutes album while reading the booklet. Why would you go to the opera if you have Netflix? Can you afford to sit through a 3 hour long simphony on a week day? Hardly. I'm not biching, I'm just trying to understand the slow and steady change in the paradigm that has been going on for the past 50 years.
(DE)CONSTRUCTING
In the light of all this, I've decided to take a closer look at my own lyric writing by deconstructing the lyrics of one of my own songs. Before I do that, I'd like to mention a thing or two about writing lyrics.
Like all other things, some people do it better than others and some have an aptitude for it but it's also something one must work on. I've been writing lyrics for about ten years now and I've been constantly working on how I want to say what I want to say. In other words, I've been practicing. Writing lyrics need practice like everything else and you do get better the more you do it. The hardest part is finding your own voice and once you do, you must work on the subtleties that essentially make great lyrics. For this little experiment, I've chosen a song from my first album Lessons in Life and Love called Childhood.
These are the lyrics:
I was born on the day St. Helens blew up
and a poet was found hanging in his kitchen
and John Paul II was born
and ‘That’s the way love goes’
the number one song.
They took my size and took my weight
and put me on my mother’s chest
and she just couldn’t know
something was terribly wrong.
I had a kidney too many
so they took it out
it’s funny how sometimes
things don’t work out
and it was a routine dissection
but this place is so hostile
I got an infection.
The chances were simple enough:
either you live or you don’t.
And I’m glad I don’t remember
but I’m afraid of the dark.
Childhood is the cruelest of times
and it tries to kill you with all that it’s got
but I think I’m OK
now that I’m not a child.
I learned how to talk all by myself
and some help from my hermaphrodite
hospital friend.
They had to decide if it was
a boy or a girl
and I don’t know how it went
but I hope they did good.
My earliest memories have faded away
but I remember having a lot of fun with my dad.
He used to teach me how to fish
and teach me how to swim
and teach me how to be
what I am ever since
but now that he’s gone
it just seems all wrong
and it’s hard to believe
a word that he said.
Later as a boy
I was fat and I looked funny
I had panic attacks
and my sinuses were runny
and I would make my eyes go all wet
because I haven’t kissed a girl yet.
Of all of the names the kids used to call me
a liar was one that stuck with me best
but I never lied and I don’t do today
it wasn’t my fault I knew too many facts
In highschool I thought I would be better off
but if you can’t kick a ball you might as well go and fuck off
and they’ll torment you in the locker room
and they will spit in your lunch
and they will laugh at your face
‘cause you were seen reading a book
we’ll I guess it’s OK
they think you are gay.
Childhood is the cruelest of times
and it tries to kill you with all that it’s got
but I think I’m OK
now that I’m not a child.
Childhood is the cruelest of times and
it tries to fuck you up from inside
but I guess I’m OK
now that I’m not a child
So let's take a closer look. The first thing is obvious from the title: the song is about childhood. Now, childhood is something that's very unique to every person but at the same time, there's this universal vision of what someone's childhood looks like. It's a carefree time you spend mostly by playing with other children, discovering things and spending time learning about life from your parents. There's this notion mostly brought to us by films that childhood is something to be enjoyed and looked back at with a warm feeling of nostalgia. I took those stereotypical elements and turned them upside down. The other obvious thing to see is that it's written in a kind of a fre verse (if you want to know more about the free verse, you should turn to Walt Whitman). The verses are different in lenght and they only occasionally rhyme (those are the two most common characteristics of a free verse). I've mentioned before that it took me a long time to decide how I want to say what I want to say and by how I don't only mean choosing a type of verse or rhyme but also choosing how to mask the meaning of each verse or strophe. Masking the meaning allows for a creation of more subtle images and it hold the attention of the listener because the listener is the one that has to decipher what's been said. In other words, it pulls the listener in. I could have written something like ''childhood is the most wonderful of times and it fills my heart with a sense of warm nostalgia''. I could have but then all whould be said and the listener wouldn't have to pay much attention to it. Also, the lsitener needs to be able to relate. If you write something and someone says ''wow, that kind of happened to me too, in a way'', you're in the clear. Now let's take an even closer look, verse by verse.
I was born on the day St. Helens blew up
on May 18th 1980. a major volcanic eruption occurred at Mount St. Helens
and a poet was found hanging in his kitchen
Ian Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen on May 18th 1980
and John Paul II was born
May 18th 1920.
and ‘That’s the way love goes’
the number one song.
Janet Jackson's That's The Way Love Goes was Billboard number 1 in 1993.
So, this song is about someone either born on May 18th 1980. or 1993. I could have written ''I was born on May 18th 1993.'' but then there's nothing left to think about. Also, a volcanic eruption is a great metaphor for birth, if you think about it.
They took my size and took my weight
a regular hospital procedure
and put me on my mother’s chest
and she just couldn’t know
something was terribly wrong.
something is wrong from the inside, not the outside
I had a kidney too many
so they took it out
the thing from the inside that's bad
it’s funny how sometimes
things don’t work out
a stereotypical trope
and it was a routine dissection
but this place is so hostile
I got an infection.
the notion that everything out there is designed to hurt you
The chances were simple enough:
either you live or you don’t.
the mechanism of the world where everything either is or isn't; the 50/50 chances we are faced with everyday
And I’m glad I don’t remember
but I’m afraid of the dark.
the leftover hospital trauma of being left alone in a dark hospital room
Childhood is the cruelest of times
and it tries to kill you with all that it’s got
but I think I’m OK
now that I’m not a child.
the inversion of a typical notion of what childhood is with a premise that we get over things as we gorw older or in other more common words, time heals all wounds
I learned how to talk all by myself
and some help from my hermaphrodite
hospital friend.
when I was in the hospital, I shared a room with an older hermaphrodite who was there because the decision had to be made about his gender. I learned how to talk because he would talk to me at night so I wouldn't feel scared.
They had to decide if it was
a boy or a girl
and I don’t know how it went
but I hope they did good.
My earliest memories have faded away
but I remember having a lot of fun with my dad.
He used to teach me how to fish
and teach me how to swim
this is again a reference to the stereotypical dad seen in movies and the son/father activities often depicted in Hollywood films
and teach me how to be
what I am ever since
but now that he’s gone
it just seems all wrong
and it’s hard to believe
a word that he said.
this strophe is a direct reference to divorce and the fact that children often see their parents as heroes who cannot do no wrong. Children often tend to believe everything their parents tell them without questioning it so these lines reveal the questioning of everything one felt was true
Later as a boy
I was fat and I looked funny
I had panic attacks
and my sinuses were runny
and I would make my eyes go all wet
because I haven’t kissed a girl yet.
the last two verses in this strophe are connected to the last two verses of the song which then forms one complete thought
Of all of the names the kids used to call me
a liar was one that stuck with me best
this is in fact also true and it's a reference to one of my experiences from school. My dad used to work as a graphic designer so back in early 2000. he bought an iMac. We were one of the few families in town to own an iMac at the time and all the other kids had PCs. They didn't believe me when I said I had a computer because it was a computer you couldn't play games on and in school we only learned about PCs so I was considered to be a liar
but I never lied and I don’t do today
it wasn’t my fault I knew too many facts.
In highschool I thought I would be better off
but if you can’t kick a ball you might as well go and fuck off
if you're not into sports, you have a bad time
and they’ll torment you in the locker room
and they will spit in your lunch
a reference to teenage movies
and they will laugh at your face
‘cause you were seen reading a book
being intelectual and interested in reading was not a quality seen as popular in highschool
we’ll I guess it’s OK
they think you are gay.
these two verses are connected to the verses about not kissing a girl. People thought I was gay because I was shy and I wasn't good around girls. It took me a long time to kiss a girl and since I wasn't good or interested in sports but rather read books and did music, I was considered gay. This is also a critique on how kids have a hard time accepting differences and how, if you are different, you are automatically gay (gay being the worst thing that someone can be, as far as they are concerned)
What I wanted to demonstrate with this short analysis of my own lyrics is that you can fit something meaningful and personal into a pop song if you put effort in it. I also wanted to show how you can take a personal experience and make it universal so everyone can relate to it, even if it didn't happen to them the way it is described in the song. Maybe the most important thing I wanted to show was how to mask the meaning in order to keep the listener interested and involved. All of that in a fairly simple pop song. So, next time you hear Funk Soul Brother, think about it.
I am sorry if this post turned out to be a bit too long, but I also hope you enjoyed it. Now, I need to pack, I'm going fishing tonight. Talk to you soon!