Lyrix

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I've always thought of the Kinks as being founding fathers of a lyrical strain in British pop - wit, "character songs", satire gentle and vicious, etc etc.

I wonder if this is just received wisdom though - not that the Kinks didn't do it and weren't good at it but their peers often did it too, so maybe it's the way they delivered the lyrics vocally or the melodies they set them to that give me that impression.

Anyway, I'd like to know what you think about lyrics - when you notice them, how highly you value them, and so on.

Or actually, let's make this more concrete: what recent records do you think have good lyrics?

Comments

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I like the lyrics to recent records by Hold Steady, Neko Case, Spoon, and Of Montreal. All for different reasons - on the Spoon records there aren't that many words, and they're suggestive rather than allusive, but kind of percussive and have a kind of restrained violence, like the music; for Neko Case they're allusive story fragments ('I leave the party / At 3am / Alone thank God') which work really well with the mood of the record as a whole; Hold Steady is very obvious and quite didactic / pedantic story-telling which fails to work as often as it works, but works so well when it does work as to be really quite powerful; and on Hissing Fauna, the Of Montreal guy just weaves this amazing kind of quest romance story (e.g. his mind has become 'vile to its creator' posing the problem is he his mind's creator, or is God, or nature etc...) into the more usual self-dissection of indie-ness (this is how I overcame my objection to the album as indie-pop -- I realised it was indie-pop as self-critique.)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

But I don't spend that much time paying attention to lyrics TBH.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

On the pop side, I liked the lyrics to GA 'Biology' to one of the Rachel Stevens singles, and to Tash-Bed's These Words, all for particular reasons I tried to explain at the time.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think GA's lyrics are terribly hit-and-miss, more often miss - I wish they'd be more direct sometimes!

I think directness is something I've come to value more and more in lyric-writing. Tho I still like the moments where remarkable resonant uncanny images leap at you from out of a song, of course.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Well it took a while to figure out Biology and I only bothered because it seemed intriguing -- other than that I've never paid attention to any.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Well my favourite lyricists are Forster and McLennan and they're pretty direct.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Wonderful writers, both of them showing sensitivity and ambition and a sense of humour across their work. Not always that direct - the chorus of Spirit of a Vampyre is gorgeously poetic:

That's when it starts
The electric train of soft cylinder parts
The dull mask of action on circus staff
Mobility the hood of the Hindu scarf
Together at last
Making jewellery at last
HEY! St James Park! OH HEY!

I've listened to that one a lot.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think they overreach themselves there (well, I say they, but that's a Forster one isn't it). I generally think F&M are brilliant compact writers though, very good at leaving just enough unsaid.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

be more direct = write songs called "hurray for bvm s3x"?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

This = all songs anyway! Apart from the ones about w4nking and bl0wj0bs of course.

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

Neko Case's New Pornographers bandmate AC Newman has said that his lyrics are often nonsense, just placing words and phrases where he thinks they sound best with scant regard to overall sense - and yet they still come over as inventively cogent for the most part: Watch them run although it's/
The minimum heroic (from The Bleeding HEart Show).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

That doesn't surprise me! The one New Porns record I listened to much started to REALLY infuriate me because it's lyrics sounded like they almost meant something, and were delivered so heartfelt like they must mean something, and they just....didn't!