Pop lyrics blogs

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Are there any good blogs or other sites which contain analysis of pop's lyrical content? Discussion of particular lyrical tropes, analysis of individual lines, reviews of songs focusing on their lyrics goodness or badenss, that type of thing?

I'm asking because I am thinking of starting one of my own. It's been my general impression that most music criticism isn't; desperately interested in lyrics, and especially so in pop music where lyrics are usually dismissed as being a bit rubbish (outside of rap anyway, where tehy are actually The Point and therefore get a lot of focus). However lyrics are a large part of my enjoyment of any song, and also I love to over-analyse the shit out of stuff that was probably scrawled on the back of a fag packet in five minutes when it was originally recorded, and think there could be a lot of amusement and/or interest to be extracted from deconstructing the semiotics of "la la la". but not in an elitist, ironic way although kinda, but I genuinely enjoy "la la las" and other such things that are on the surface dumb but in a clever and/or expressive way.

Anyway ramble ramble, any suggestions?

Comments

[koganbot]

Yeah, well actually you're surrounded by 'em: me, Dave, Erika, Lex, Alex O., Tim Finney, Jonathan Bogart, Jonathan Bradley, Chuck Eddy, Mike Barthel, Anthony Easton - that's just off the top of my head, and I'm probably missing some people who are key - and though I don't think of Tom Ewing or Piratemoggy doing it a lot, they'll sometimes grab hold of a lyric too. I remember Tom generating a bunch of first lines on shuffle and then explaining why some were good and others weren't. The problem in tracking this down is that we'll post all over the place, on blogs, comment threads, message boards, even the occasional magazine or Webzine, and whether we'll write about lyrics or not won't be predictable, so there isn't a simple link to send you to while saying, "Here it is, the sea of lyrics is dead ahead," or anything like that. But I'll post some links when I get the chance in the next few days. Warning: I ignored the memo that instructed us to treat rock and disco and pop and country as different in kind, and i don't - I don't think that there's a particular "pop" way of doing things, for instance.

The idea of either starting a blog or doing regular poptimists posts on the subject seems like a good one, talking about why a particular set of lyrics seems to work better than some other set, what works in song that doesn't necessarily come across on the page, and so forth.

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely, I already follow basically everything most of those guys do anyhow; it was a centralised thing with a relentless focus on lyrics in particular, whether by multiple authors or none, which I was interested in. It's the sort of thing a group Tumblr would be very good at - it's the centrality that doesn't exist. A linkpile would be great!

I am happy to hear about rock, country, disco etc. as well; it has just been my experience that people to focus a lot on lyrical narrative in country, and there is a fair amount of lyrical analysis on at least some rock (both indie and not) stuff, nd rpa obviously has its lyrics discussed a lot in places I'm already aware of, but I love it most of all when people chat about, like, Girls Aloud lyrics and such, and it just semed to be subjectively like there was a lot less of that.

[koganbot]

Girls Aloud would be interesting to explore because, even though I sometimes like them quite a lot (made my P&J ballot last year with a song that most Brit critics didn't seem to like), I'm sure I don't get them. There seems to be a Brit tendency to simply declare control over style, as if to assert you're using fashion rather than following it. Not that most Brits do this, just the ones who make a point of manipulating style. Whereas the American counterparts - Warhol, Madonna - are much more contentious in their manipulations, which I think is a tacit admission that they're not in control, that one has to fight for style. So naturally I tend to identify harder with the Americans. Back forty years or so I recognized that the Stones were the best rock group, and I identified with Jagger's mind, and with Ray Davies', and his distance from the gorgeousness of his own music, but my heart was with Dylan and the Airplane and the Velvet Underground.

(Not that there aren't counterexamples. John Lennon always seemed to be fighting for his very right to breathe.)

[cis.livejournal.com]

http://www.songmeanings.net/

not necessarily always good, but often uh enlightening