How bad can lyrics get?

Check out "Say You; Say Me" by Lionel Ritchie.
Rod Norman
Engineer

rayc said:
I was wondering about this & I don't mean the trite pap that pop often uses.
For some reason I listened to some Byron era Uriah Heep tonight. A band I could not get into as a kid or adult and I wanted to find out why. The answer was clear & uncomplicated when I listened tonight.
Their lyrics were utter rubbish. Even given the Dungeon & Dragons theme in general - & there're a lot of band who do/did use those ideas, Heeps lyrics were a stinking HEAP or URIAH & Do Do.
Even as I managed to get along with some of those riffs I get hammered back to reality by the banality and plain awfulness of the stories, the rhymes and the language.
Any similar experiences with other bands/artists/performers who were considered important, deep etc.?
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I've obviously avoided charting POP songs in my comments - let's face it, pop is often constructed on an LCD basis.
 
miroslav said:
Well....I don't know of too many genres that completely depart from using any/all lyric clichés.
It's really about good overall songs, not just lofty/deep/uber-creative lyrics.
I think when some songs get too lyric-focused, too wordy, too "clever"....it can actually drag down the rest of the song, and when that happens, the lyrics become irrelevant.
IMO...you can still write somthing basic, like a good "falling in/out of love" song and not have all the lyrics be just boring and overused cliché rhymes.
There's not too many topics that haven't been sung about or that you can write new/fresh lyrics for and set them to music...and not use some known themes, imagery and words.
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fat_fleet said:
You know, I've gone back and forth on the whole hey-day-may-say-way thing, and the way I think about it now is that I want to write words that kind of glide by, not too many barbs that stick out. The listener is free to pick up on them, and they hopefully don't suck, but they also don't take the listener hostage by being too "important sounding" or unconventional. I kinda like words to have a flow and not sound too forced. Kinda like all that math-rock that's a bunch of changes and unconventional time sigs thrown together...not seeing the forest for the trees, thinking it'll make a song "interesting" when there's really not much song there. But my tastes have been changing toward more trad sounding stuff in recent years, so you get my biased opinion there.
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Yeah, I'm not too hung up on songs having to have specific meanings - and I don't particularly like being preached at in a song, any more than I like tired cliches. But if you're going to sing a love/break up song, then at least bring some interesting imagery or twists to it. Like with Blood on The Tracks (sorry fleet, I know you're burned out on this one!) - bitter break up album, but Dylan's lyrics are pretty creative throughout.

If it's all true/blue/through, I hear the song once and there's nothing left to make me want to hear it again. It doesn't need to be too wordy, have crazy rhyming schemes or looking for some couplets to go with verbose/obscure phrases - but it needs to have some depth to it. For me, it's just the same as a singer backed only with an acoustic, playing G, D & A chords over and over - it gets tired quickly.

I don't really care if the lyrics are gibberish either, as long as there are phrases there that amuse/interest/engage me on some level and some interesting clashes of words. It's not a binary distinction - like you choose either hackneyed cliche or overly complicated smart arse-ness....
 
robgreen said:
.... as long as there are phrases there that amuse/interest/engage me on some level ....
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Right...and most good songs have just some of that...rarely are the entire lyrics "golden".

Sure, there are the occasional songs where the lyrics just roll from start to finish...but most good songs will feature maybe a catchy chorus, or a few really solid verses that just seem to stick in people's minds...or even a single phrase...etc.

If your lyrics connect with people on some level, that's enough to make them good, and make the song good.
 
I have heard along my life several songs which the lyrics is there because it HAS to have a guy/girl singing ANYTHING just to achieve the attention of an specific audience that expects that it has one. Seems that for mostly of such people the meaning is secondary.

Being a non-native english speaker (Im a brazilian) it puts me at an awesome position that is don't understand WTF they are singing unless I pay a lot of attention or that I look for the lyrics over the web to read it. Mostly of time I just enjoy the beauty of the spoken language while it wanders along the melodic track. That's when I become one of those people that don't give a sh*t for the lyrics.

By the other hand, it is a completely different story when I listen to musics sung in my mother language because I get all the meaning (or the lack of) instantly even when I don't want to pay attention to it.

All in all meanless lyrics sucks. Not only because they are meanless, but mainly because as a listener you keep trying and trying to hook what is behind the puzzling phrases as if it would YOUR fault for not understand it. It really piss me off.

:facepalm:
 
rayc said:
I was wondering about this & I don't mean the trite pap that pop often uses.
For some reason I listened to some Byron era Uriah Heep tonight. A band I could not get into as a kid or adult and I wanted to find out why. The answer was clear & uncomplicated when I listened tonight.
Their lyrics were utter rubbish.
Even as I managed to get along with some of those riffs I get hammered back to reality by the banality and plain awfulness of the stories, the rhymes and the language.
Any similar experiences with other bands/artists/performers who were considered important, deep etc.?
Click to expand...
I can't think of a single band or artist that I've rejected on the basis that their lyric were rubbish ! There have been songs that I might have chosen to no longer listen to because the subject matter or some of the things said in the song were of such a nature that enjoying the song would be pretty hard.
But almost all the people I listen to that utilize lyrics have written awful ones and banal ones and ones I'm indifferent to ~ as well as good ones and great ones.
Focusing on Uriah Heep for a moment, the only album of theirs I have any time for is "Fallen angel." On my heavy rock journey, that was one of the earliest albums I got {preceded only by Purple & Zeppelin} and the songs are great. I did analyze the lyrics once and most of the songs are about the thornier aspects of relationships. I think by that point Ken Hensley and Mick Box were the only original members still left.
But pretty much everyone has come up with some real clunkers when it comes to lyrics. But if the song is one I like, my appreciation of the lyric usually came a lot later.
 
NotThatBright said:
Does that mean you still have your Bobby McFerrin tape?
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Funny you should mention him. I cannot stand Bobby McFerrin. Back around 83~84, a drummer I used to play a lot with was really into Bobby. He was actually into a lot of avant garde stuff, most of which was pretty unlistenable in my opinion. I tried to like it all but stuff like 40 minute albums of the sound of someone's brainwaves hooked up to electrodes and reproduced as soundwaves ain't something I particularly ever want to hear beyond once ! And Bobby making noises without any kind of instruments while patting trees for rhythm, no ta.
I'll take Heep's shitty sword and sorcery lyrics, methinks !!
 
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