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| From | Michael Bennett <mrhonorama@ameritech.net> |
| Subject | Re: age, and reviews of bad country albums |
| Date | Thu, 19 May 2005 05:56:26 -0700 (PDT) |
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Two things --
In his excellent essay collection, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa
Puffs, Chuck Klosterman does a great piece on country
lyrics. Klosterman gives them props, noting how many
country songs really deal with the trials and trevails
of the common man (and woman).
I certainly concur w/Greg as to the state of lyrics in
power pop generally. Perhaps, however, it could be
argued that expressing love is one of the most
difficult things for people to do well. Thus, power
pop lyrics that fall back on facile simplicity and
cliche are actually truly reflective of the general
state of inarticulateness that most men have in
talking about love. Accordingly, power pop lyrics are
actually a frank portrayal of how men deal with love.
Boy, if I can throw post-modernism in there somewhere,
I think I have a thesis proposal.
Mike Bennett
--- Gregory Sager <hochsalzburg@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 15:24:34 -0700
> From: "JakeBeamer.com"
> To: audities@smoe.org
> Subject: age, and reviews of bad country albums
> Message-ID:
> <829f355505051815241645d3a0@mail.gmail.com>
>
> oh and i've never gotten how these country stars
> keep writing about
> the same crap over and over. i guess the same way
> love songs get
> written over and over.
>
>
> I'm not a big country fan, but as far as lyrics go I
> think that country songs have established a better
> track record than most other musical genres, in the
> main. But, more importantly, power pop fans have no
> room to criticize the lyrical content of any other
> musical genre, given the stultifying banality of the
> vast majority of power pop lyrics.
>
> It's not that I'm opposed on principle to seeing the
> eight-millionth variation on "I want you", "I want
> you back", or "I hate you". Romantic love is a
> universal category of human interest, and it's been
> a staple of songwriting since the days of the
> medieval troubadors. What I hate is how most
> songwriters seem to have just given into the idea
> that any attempt to write a song about male/female
> themes will by nature devolve into hackwork. Or,
> worse, how the hackwork that they're presenting is
> actually something that they think is worthy of
> releasing to the world with their names on it.
>
> I understand that lyric-writing is a gift; everyone
> thinks they can write them, but few write them well.
> It would be unreasonable for me to expect every
> power pop band to have a Costello or a Westerberg in
> their midst. Nevertheless, it irritates me to no end
> to see musicians craft songs or albums that are
> carefully-constructed labors of love with regard to
> melody, harmony, arrangement, instrumental and vocal
> performance, etc. -- yet reveal a total lack of
> imagination when it comes to the lyrics, which come
> across as having been tossed off at the last minute
> and have all the impact of a wet slice of bread.
>
> (Don't bother posting rebuttals that consist of
> lists of your favorite current pop lyricists,
> because I can name a bunch myself. One that leaps to
> mind is a fellow Auditeer, Ed Masley of the Breakup
> Society. The man's an ace in the lyrics department;
> check out his band's latest album, *James at 35*.
> It's a worthy album on many counts, but contrary to
> most power pop discs the lyrics are actually a
> strong point. They ring all the usual changes in
> terms of boy/girl stuff, but he doses them with
> enough poignancy, humor, and memorable couplets to
> make *James at 35* stand out from the pack. My point
> is that lyricists like Masley are the exception in
> power pop circles, not the rule.)
>
> I have a close friend who is as zealous a music fan
> as me. His tastes are somewhat more far-ranging than
> mine, and although he loves guitar pop he mostly
> relies upon me to keep him up to speed on it via mix
> CDRs while he travels down whatever other musical
> path strikes his fancy that month. I recently handed
> him six CDRs' worth of very tasty pop mixes I'd
> made, much of it culled from the last SOTT round and
> the stack of CDs I collected at last year's Chicago
> IPO. His comment a month later was, "I'm really
> enjoying those mixes you made for me, but one thing
> I'm starting to realize about all that power pop is
> that for me the empty lyrics are beginning to
> detract from all of those great melodies." And this
> is from a guy who worships at the altar of Brian
> Wilson and Paul McCartney.
>
> The subject of lyrical content is a perennial
> warhorse in the Audities repertoire, and I apologize
> for raising it yet again. But accusing country stars
> of "writing about the same crap over and over" on a
> listserv that's centered around power pop strikes me
> as entering swarthy-pot-and-kettle territory.
>
> I just wish that most power pop wasn't actually
> power pap when it comes to lyrics.
>
>
>
> Gregory Sager
>
>
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