Do you think you could have fallen in love with Dylan's words at a poetry reading, divested of the music in which the art was framed? Imagine never having heard the music that accompanied Dylan's songs to begin with.
Could you love something on a par with Bob Dylan's words... rapped?
It's a "test" to see if you truly love lyrics, i.e. poetry.
And you would not think, to hear him sing
That Todd was the atom bomb
But he knocked up a post that was just the most
On home recording.com
I thought your post before this one was fantastic. This one ^^highlights something I've said a few times - I absolutely love lyrics, but not as independent from the music. The overall sound for me is the primary thingy. But the music does a funny thing. It makes the words come alive, whether I consider them good or not. It kind of shines a light on them and makes them noticeable. And in many cases they then take on a life of their own, rather like a guitar line might, once I've focused on it. Makes me notice lyrics I like as well as ones that I think are rubbish. And for the record there are hundereds if not thousands of songs that I think have shitty lyrics but I love those songs !
What you said about about the era you grew up listening to songs in, I can dig that totally. I grew up in an era slightly earlier, though not much. The same kind of thing applied - it was the sound, the emotional connection. Yet, running parallel to this was a desire to know the words of the songs, not to determine whether they were good or not, but because it was just one of those inexplicable things kids in England did in the 60s and 70s. We just wanted to sing along to all these great songs that so connected with us. Singing surrounded us, it was a singing culture. You sang at school, at football matches, in church, at weddings and funerals, in the playground; you made fun of people with singing.......The meaning of the words was unimportant, we just wanted to sing them, whether you were a cool geezer, a meathead, a plain Jane, a roughneck, a dreamy chick, whatever. We actually used to buy magazines like Disco 45 and Smash hits that carried the lyrics to the big hits of the day. But as some of us got older, we noticed that the songs
were actually saying something. In the UK, punk would never have had the brief but seemingly all consuming power it did have if the Pistols, Clash, Damned, UK Subs, Sham 69, Banshees, Generation X and others sang primarilly
lurve songs or lyrically obscure stuff. Reggae without lyrics about slavery, Babylon and Marcus Garvey, Ethiopia and Africa would have fizzled out like "My boy Lollipop". Of course the music was crucial. Even more so than the words. For the most part, I'd say it always is - at least initially. And no, I can't say I would like the lyrics I like if they were rapped coz I tend to like rap conceptually, rather than actually, for the most part.
I do love lyrics, not poetry. I also love riffs, solos, backing vocals and drum patterns. But I don't like any musical element independent of the song.
