Who are the great lyricists of today?

...I also happen to think quite highly of my own lyrics. The New Yorker called me "intelligent," so it's official, bitch!

It's Mangum, but I agree.

Gimme a fucking break. Show me an intelligent recent Thom Yorke lyric that doesn't become a deconstructed cliché like "We're all accidents waiting to happen."

and who gives a shit about lyrics anyway?

Anyway, the answer is so obvious: Bernard Sumner.

Stuff like "I've Made Enough Friends" from Secaucus, and "Ex-Girl Collection" from Meadowlands, are both about 100x more sophisticated than your typical rock or indie lyrics.

Which is also a little scary for me personally, because this is likely going to be the first single off our first album.

This question is from having heard recent bands like Art Brut (omg, how self conscious!), the Killers (wooooaaaahhh) and Kaiser Chefs (not the kind of thing that I like) who, whilst the music is nothing to shout about, manage to force in the most teeth-grindingly bad records I've ever heard.

I hate to be a hark-backer but I'm sure mainstream rock and pop had better to offer in the way of lyrics before the noughties. Even, say Blur or Nirvana at least had something going on in there, be it about mullatos and country houses - but at least it was SOMETHING.

your favorite current lyricist

Name a better lyricist than Mark E Smith

your favorite current lyricist

gretchen wilson's stuff is good plainspoken pop country songwriting, too, not sure if it's gretchen or someone else writing the words, but someone's writing 'em.

for old fogeys who are still around, i think the go-betweens are still writing amazing pop songs.

for young fogeys who should be bigger than they are, nyc popsters schwervon, who tend to write about food and other domestic necessities, are pretty great with their words.

The f/k/a alt country boys:
Jeff Tweedy
Jay Farrar
Rhett Miller

The f/k/a alt country girls:
Lucinda Williams
Cheri Knight (stunning, but almost 9 years since the last record)
Neko Case
Kim Richey

Hyper-verbal lit-rockers:
Miller (see above)
John Samson (Weakerthans)
Colin Meloy (Decemberists)
Aimee Mann
The guy from Okkervil River

I wanna be Cole Porter:
Stephin Merritt
Nellie MacKay

Neo-soul:
Jill Scott

Hip-hop:
Jay-Z
Black Thought (Roots)

New Dylans:
Conor Oberst (not everything, but his best is pretty frickin good)

Hors de categorie:
Jo Lloyd (Stretch Princess)
Elizabeth Elmore (The Reputation, Sarge)

Not meant to be exclusive . . . I've never really listened to Silver Jews, etc.

And even songs like "Fell in Love with a Girl" and "Hotel Yorba" tend to have really deft little lyrical devices that are difficult to notice since the song structures are so simple/elemental.

The unexpected use of the phrase "it bears repeating" in "Fell in Love with a Girl" is one of my favorite lyrical mini-moments of the last several years.

Since Isbell joined up at Decoration Day, they may be the most talented band out there right now.

("You're Pretty Good Lookin - FOR A GIRL" is a great, hilarious, line.)

Red hair with a curl
Mellow roll for the flavor
And the eyes for peeping
Can't keep away from the girl
These two sides of my brain
Need to have a meeting
Can't think of anything to do
My left brain knows that
All love is fleeting
She's just looking for something new
And I said it once before
But it bears repeating

Ah a ah a ah ah ah
Ah a ah a ah ah ah

Can't think of anything to do
My left brain knows that
All love is fleeting
She's just looking for something new
And I said it once before
But it bears repeating

Fell in love with a girl
Fell in love once and almost completely
She's in love with the world
But sometimes these feelings
Can be so misleading
She turns and says "Are you alright?"
I said "I must be fine cause my heart's still beating
"Come and kiss me by the riverside,
"Bobby says it's fine he don't consider it cheating now"

Ah a ah a ah ah ah
Ah a ah a ah ah ah

Can't think of anything to do
My left brain knows that
All love is fleeting
She's just looking for something new
And I said it once before
But it bears repeating

(**all in about 2:15**)

I hate the White Stripes more than I could describe here, yet I really liked those lyrics. Good game, fair Jack.

Lock thread.

White moon, white moon
Breaks open the tomb
Of a deserted cartoon that I wrote
Creature come, creature, creature
My own double feature
As I'm warming the bleachers at home

" if i lose a sequin here and there
more salt than pepper in my hair
can i rely on you,when all the songs are through
to be for me the everthere?

slide into another book
now and then laugh out loud
throw that very dirty look
which says ok, stop staring at me now
if i lose the sequence here or there
less derring-do than quiet care
can i rely on you for a good talking to
and be for me the everthere?'

well i think that's just lovely.

'the everthere' by elbow

"The Heart of Saturday Night":

Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone’s ringin’; it’s your second cousin
Is it the barmaid that’s smilin’ from the corner of her eye?
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
’cause you’re dreamin’ of them saturdays that came before
And now you’re stumblin’
You’re stumblin’ onto the heart of saturday night

also bill callahan

see, it even rhymes!

B-double E double R U-N-beer run
B-double E double R U-N-beer run
all we need is a ten and five-er,
car and key and a sober driver,
B-double E double R U-N-beer run

a couple of frat guys from abilene
drove out all night to see Robert Earl Keen
at the K-pei swine and sworay dance-
they wore baseball caps and khaki pants-
they wanted cigarettes-so to save a little money-
they got one from this hippie who smelt kina funny
and-next thing they knew they were both pretty hungry-
and pretty thirsty too

B-double E double R U-N-beer run
B-double E double R U-N-beer ru-unn
all we need is a ten and five-er,
car and key and a sober driver,
B-double E double R U-N-beer run

found a store with a sign-said
there beer was coldest-so they sent
in Brad- cause he looked the oldest
-he got a case of beer and a candy bar
-walked over to where all them registers are
layed his fake id on the countertop
the clerk looked, he turned up, he looked he stopped.
he said "son, I'm not gonna call the cops, but im gonna
have to keep this card"-
the guys both took it pretty haard

B-double E double R U-N-beer run
B-double E double R U-N-beer ru-un
oh how happy we would be-
had we only brought a better fake id
B-double E double R U-N-beer run

they found this nother old hippie named
sleepie john-claimed to be the one from the Robert
Earl Keen song
so they gave him all their cash-he bought em some brew
-was a beautiful day out in Santa Cruz
they were feelin' so good it shoulda been a crime-
the crowd was cool and the band was prime
they made it back up front to their seats just in time
so they could sing with all their friends
they sang-"the rode goes on forever and the party
never ends"

B-double E double R U-N-beer run
all we need is a ten and a five-er car and
key and a sober driver
B-double E double R U-N-beer run

hey, hey, my, my
rock and roll will never die
hang your hair down in your eye
you'll make a million dollars

well i was in this band goin' nowhere fast
we sent out demos but everybody passed
so one day we finally took the plunge
moved out to seattle to play some grunge
washington state that is
space needle
eddie vedder
mudhoney

now to fit in fast we wear flannel shirts
we turn our amps up until it hurts
we've got bad attitudes and what's more
when we play we stare straight down at the floor
wowee
pretty scary
how pensive
how totally alternative

now to fit in on the seattle scene
you've gotta do somethin' they ain't never seen
so thinkin' up a gimmick one day
we decided to be the only band that wouldn't play a note
under any circumstances
silence
music's original alternative
root's grunge

well we spread the word through the underground
that we were the hottest new thing in town
the record guy came out to see us one day
and just like always we didn't play
it knocked him out
he said he loved our work
he said he loved our work but he wasn't sure if he could sell a record
with nothing on it
i said tell 'em we're from seattle
he advanced us two and a half million dollars

(chorus)

well they made us do a video but that wasn't tough
'cuz we just filmed ourselves smashin' stuff
it was kinda weird 'cuz there was no music
but mtv said they'd love to use it

the kids went wild, the kids went nuts
rolling stone gave us a five-star review said we played with guts
we're scorin' chicks, takin' drugs
then we got asked to play mtv unplugged
you should have seen it
we went right out there and refused to do acoustical versions of the
electrical songs we had refused to record in the first place
then we smashed our shit

well we blew 'em away at the grammy's show
by refusing to play and refusing to go
and then just when we thought fame would last forever
along come this band that wasn't even together
now that's alternative
now that's alternative to alternative
i feel stupid
and contagious

well our band got dropped and that ain't funny
'cuz we're all hooked on drugs but we're outta money
so the other day i called up the band
i said boys i've taken all i can
shave off your goatees
pack the van
we're goin' back to athens

Hmph.

Bill Callaghan of Smog, Will Oldham (though I've not investigated any of his albums yet "Agnes, Queen Of Sorrow" is genius).

I find Anyte Greie's sideways, deconstructed approach to lyrics very interesting.

Now what is that she wants?
And what is it that she needs?
Did she hear about the brand new things
That you just bought for me?
Cos y'all didn't have no kids
And you share no mutual friends
And you told me that turned tricks
When y'all broke up in '96

Or at least it's what leaped into my head when i saw the thread title.

I used to love incredibly ornate lyrics - between the ages of 13 and 17 Joni Mitchell's Hejira was my favourite album partly for this reason - but when i come across recent examples it can make me feel a bit uncomfortable. Whereas the stuff I tend to really connect with now doesn't necessarily leap out at you when written down, but feels really powerful in the context of the song.

On the page Elvis Costello's lyrics are the last word on cleverness, until you hear them in his mouth and set to music. At his worst those same clever lyrics sound mannered, verbose, and stupid.

Which is why I posted Bernard Sumner a couple of days ago. He does exactly what a good lyricist should: convey ambiguous feelings with a minimum of fuss, the words sometimes no more than signifiers.

I gotta say - per the original strict definition of good lyrics on this thread (current, mainstream, non-rap), Gwen Stefani's "Bubble Pop Electric" is not bad at all. "I'm restless / Can't you see that I'm the bestest" is especially great. I wonder how much of it is Andre 3000's work.

So what you're saying is Costello's lyrics should be read and not heard?

Little Birds

Little birds born without a mother or a father
I can watch their bodies forming in the running water
Now there is another in the middle of my mouth
100 all together within me now
Little bird little bird come into my body

Mother they're within me every moment I'm awaking
Bodies multiplying till they finally overtake me
Open up my mouth but all you'll ever hear is singing
Put your hands within me and you'll know what I am feeling
I just want to swallow up and promise to protect them

Daddy come to touch me but he seen his hands are shaking
Look into my eyes and he can see their bodies breaking
Push me to the floor and then his hands started beating
"I don't want to hear it anymore," he kept repeating
"Do you really want the burning hell that we believe in?"

"Do you know the burning hell it took your baby brother?
Did you see how far he fell and how he made us suffer?
Another boy in town at night he took him for his lover
And deep in sin they held each other.
So I took a hammer nearly beat his little brains in
Knowing god in heaven would've never could forgive him
So I took a hammer and I nearly beat his brains in."

Little boy born without a father or a mother
Taken to the river and then pushed into the water
Now the priest is singing that the hell is getting hotter
Father son and holy ghost the only one to save him
From the thing he loves the most but we know will betray him
Father son and holy ghost the only one to save him
From the thing he loves the most but we know will betray him

And here beneath the water I can see how the lights distort so strange
And I think this is how I would like to leave my body and start again.

-- joseph cotten (josephcotte...), July 23rd, 2005.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

O.T.M. the whole album is lyrically great. it had to be said.

Especially the worst suspects on Imperial Boredom.

OTM on the Gwen love re "Cool." I love the simplicity of "I call you by your new last name."

I'm more than baffled by the restrictions that dog latin wants to put on us: If hip-hop isn't today's biggest pop music, then what is? Why does M.I.A. count as not obscure in comparison to hip-hop, e.g., in comparison to Jay-Z, Eminem (my vote for best lyricist of the '00s), the Ying Yang Twins, ad infinitum? And why are lyrics about Sri Lanka by definition better than lyrics about having a good time? (Not that P!nk and several thousand other rockers and popsters are merely writing lyrics about having a good time.)

I'll give what Shakey said more thought, though I wouldn't see why hip-hop's dominance would be a reason for rock lyricists to lose their craftsmanship. But if you want to go where clever turns of phrase and narrative are in full effect, go to country music, a lot of which is popular and rocks. Just to name a couple, Montgomery Gentry's "Cold One Comin' On," written by Mike Geiger, Michael Huffman, Woody Mullis.

"Weatherman says it might hit 95
September's gonna feel more like July
He's callin' for a night that's warm and mild
But I think he missed it by a mile
He just don't know that you're gone
I feel a cold one comin' on"

Toby Keith's "If I Was Jesus," written by Chuck Cannon and Phil Madeira.

"I'd be the guy at the party
Turning water to wine
Yeah me and my disciples
We'd have a real good time"

Gene Watson's "New Woman" (by A.J. Masters, Michael Henney, and Clint Daniels), which I'm not going to quote because it takes a couple of stanzas to unfold, but the basic idea is that he'd broken up with her, left her in tears, now he's in the bar celebrating, and guess who walks in, resplendent, looking like a...

There are loads more, and if I knew the genre better I'd have a better idea of who the standouts are.

"You can dress me up in diamonds
You can dress me up in dirt
You can throw me like a lineman
I like it better when it hurts"

But the best by far in the genre are (or were) Marit Larsen and Marion Raven, who were the two M's in M2M and weren't even writing in their native language. I liked this especially from Marit (at age 15):

"Every time I think I've had enough of you
I take you back again
Not because I need a friend
Just because I can't pretend
Like the others do

"You think you're really serious
Clever and mysterious
Talking like you're dangerous
Talking like a fool"

Very direct (and if you think it's easy to pull off that ease of speech while maintaining rhythm and rhyme, you try it), yet emotionally complex as well, and for sure Lavigne-Matrix remembered this when they wrote (the less interesting and less complicated) "Complicated" a couple of years later.

Marion, who at age 15 wrote, "I may not have the blonde hair you like/I may not have eyes like the sky," has at age 21 discovered Joni and abstract thought (from the evidence of the three live clips on MTV Asia), and Marit has her new band back in Norway and has posted on her Website that these days she's listening to Bright Eyes. We'll see if writing as adults works as well for them as being teens.

(Xpost: I love Finn, but he's at least as full of verbal overload as all those hip-hoppers who for some reason don't qualify for this thread.)

Anyway, as I was going to say, on second though I've realised that Ian Crause is pretty current although he hasn't done anything in three years, so I'll nominate him. I'll second Amy Rigby, and not just because -- well, I know a relative of hers.

I also think Marion Coutts of Dog Faced Hermans was a tremendous lyricist--it's a pity she's not really doing music any more.

And I love Hutch Harris's lyrics for the Thermals, esp. because he pays a lot of attention to the sounds of words as well as overall sense--the Christina Rossetti of punk rock?

They aren't always the easist to make out!

"Maybe I don't have the blonde hair you like
Or maybe I don't have eyes like the sky"

(Finn sneers, steps into the ring, and recites the lyric to his song "Charlemagne in Sweatpants")

"when he's holding then the streetlights seem an awful lot like spotlites. sometimes charlemagne gets uptight. running numbers between bars. running girls between the cars. and sometimes charlemagne feels all right. all right.
charlemagne had eyes like a lover. but last winter there was weather and his eyes they iced right over. cassanova's in the corner and he's asking for a dance. speedshooters driving round and coming down and tryna hook up with an exit ramp.
tramps like us and we like tramps. charlemagne's got something in his sweatpants.

holly was supposed to be at ccd but she was down on shady streets. she was looking round for something she could take up to a party. and it's not like she's enslaved. it's more like she's enthralled. she don't need it but she likes it. so she always makes that call. first it makes her feel tall then it makes her feel small and it's all a sweet fleeting feeling. they did the "been caught stealing" into "dancing on the ceiling." and you're damn right we danced. charlemagne's got something in his sweatpants.

do you want me to tell it like boy meets girl and the rest is history? or do you want it like a murder mystery? i'm gonna tell it like a comeback story.
'cause we when we left we were defeated and depressed. and when we arrived we were ripping high. we had a gun in the glovebox. we had some sweet stuff tucked into our socks. we had jesus christ in all his glory.

MOMUS: Ha! HA! Is that all you have? Are you finished? Well, hold steady, Craig, here comes "Beowulf (I Am Deformed)":

(Clenches a red tranche of intellectual muscle and recites):

I have come with my sword Naegling
And the usual aches and pains
To defeat Grendel, the monster
Lately scourge of the Danes
Showing no mercy in the mead hall
He laid waste thirty thanes
In return I will chop off his shoulder
Then I will deal with his mother

Where is the disabled loo?
I'm feeling slightly queasy, woozy
So would you if you'd had to do
The things I've had to do
Slay the good, slay the bad
Do I have the right to use the disabled loos?
Did they send the right man from the land of heroes?

Stop laughing, I am Beowulf
I give you my oath, as I was born
I am Beowulf
I am the hero coming to save you
I am deformed

Cancer gubbins that hangs at my neck like a turkey throat
Swaddling leather trussing up a shrivelled belly bloat
Dangling from my orifice is a puzzling speculum drip
If you promise not to tell anyone I have a hare lip
A smoking hole and a very large mole
My face it slithers, my ears are torn
Don't laugh, I am deformed

Stop laughing, I am Beowulf
I give you my oath, as I was born
I am Beowulf
I am the hero coming to save you
I am deformed

So go ahead, laugh, you won't be the first
Richard the Hundredth, the Hunchback laughed
Henry Dalrymple the simpleton convulsed with mirth
At this sick rubber joke my bones as they poke out of a hole in my skin
At this helplessly flailing mutant apalling prosthetic thalydomide limb
Have a good laugh while you're at it at my schlong
My metallic foot brace it scratches and drags
I dribble down a twig
I twitch along the ground
My Bruegel boots they beggar belief
I have the stinky shanks of a hound
My patchy moustache hides a birthmark
I have come to save Denmark

Stop laughing, I am Beowulf
I give you my oath, as I was born
I am Beowulf
I am the hero I've come to save you
And I am deformed

(The referee pulls the titans apart).

"People Die/ It's the facts/ So there, I said it/ Now you can relax.../ People die/ La de da/ It gives the day a certain je ne sais quoi."

Sounds like one of Stephin Merritt's dryer songs. Or how about:

"Moses comes down from the mountain and he's pissed.../ He says, 'Y'all coulda built a boat/ If anybody had the guts/ While I was up there talking to trees and growing my beard to my nuts."

Pretty good, if not quite Adam Green standard. Oh, but I forgot, Adam Green (my actual nomination for the "greatest lyricist of today") isn't good either, according to the rockist critics at the 'Fork. Why? Because he doesn't "mean it".

Just as the "bigger problem with Travistan is Morrison's tendency to leave themes unresolved" (what, no Hollywood ending? No closure? Terribly, terribly bad!), so Green is just not tackling this lyric-writing thing head on like a man:

"Green's self-consciously dweeby vocals hang his off-kilter lyrics like a doomed curveball. We're supposed to see how clever he is when he invokes celebrities' names or naughty images. Occasionally, he gets his giggles, usually with stream-of-consciousness imagery about "blank-faced footprints of the zebras in the glen" or non sequiturs like "her lips taste just like Sun Chips." Nearly as often, though, Green is just the average schmuck with cool friends who mistakenly thinks he's the life of the party. Politics aside, Bush-bashing "Choke on a Cock" is boring. "Carolina" exists for its rhyme with "vagina." Crackhouses and cock-biting prostitutes also rear their proverbial heads, titillating would-be indie kids (I just said "tit")."

I'm trying to imagine a hard-rockin', Bush-lovin', committed Green "meaning it" and the picture is just horrible.

If only you were right! But they are around every corner. Well, clustered around every Adam Green album, anyway. Look at this, from Neumu's review of Green's new album:

"[description of Green's last album] What happened after that, though, has sent Green to this musical grave. Putting together a band to play the expansive arrangements of that disc, he recruited a crew of dudes who're, basically, a bunch of slick session musicians... a posse of paycheck-cashing guns-for-hire; and, without Green's punk-rock strums as an anchor, these fancy-fingered folk're free to overplay their way through particularly busy songs filled with oversweet piano and Latiny guitar-strums. What's most noxious, though, is the way that Green sounds perfectly at home with them, his singing on "Crackhouse Blues," in particular, being just as self-conscious and soulless as the musos he's playing with."

There it is: session musicians = money = no soul = not meaning it. And a hidden inverse which is pure Romanticism: amateur musicians = poor = soul = meaning it. It's a pre-Adorno vision of soul, because Adorno nailed the paradox beautifully: "in the end, soul itself is the longing of the soul-less for redemption". Romantics project authenticity onto the poor, and see it missing in situations where professionalisation and money dominate. Trouble is, that's all situations ever in popular music, a professionalised commercial venture. So why single out Adam Green for paying his musicians?

Such criticism isn't postmodernist, and it isn't even modernist. That's why I say it hasn't even reached the 20th century yet. It hasn't read Adorno, let alone Derrida.

And here's our old friend the "meaning it" meme clear as day, in Ye Olde Pitchforke:

"Green comes armed with paradoxical praise from Julian Casablancas: "He's eccentric and down to earth." So is Richman, still rock rock rockin' "Government Center". But Richman's cult fame lives on for a reason: He means it. With Green, that's never been clear."

It's odd, because you'd think the meaning of Green's song about Bush, "Choke on a Cock", couldn't be clearer or more heartfelt:

"I'd be so happy if I got to meet George Bush...
I would dance on NBC and say
'George Bush shook hands with me'
Then I'd go and choke on a cock"

But Pitchfork calls that one "boring". So presumably this thing about "not meaning it" is something more like "We know what you really mean, but we want you to mean something else, please."

all the while propping up a slightly above average band like the Arcade Fire to iconic status.

Breathless Humanist Interviewer: Your previous band the Moldy Peaches had a bratty immaturity, which was fine at the time, but I think the stuff you're doing at the moment is a lot more... there's a lot more depth to it, you seem to be enjoying it more. There's a sense of wonder in the songs, and love, I guess, for a lot of things, and I think that's a lot nicer. Do you feel that you're more comfortable with music and performing and stuff nowadays, or...

Green: Yeah.

So yes, I think Joseph Cotten is bang on the money about the banal Romantic humanism, the "tattoo on the wrist moment", that informs entertainment, and is no less cynical, superflat or anti-humanist, in fact, than anything else on TV, even if it "makes the clown cry".

As Green sings—and I'm sure he means it—"can't figure out this place, guess someone hates my guts".

xpost with It's not that superflatness etc are or aren't "my kind of things", it's that they're the world we live in.

good god, that sounds like religious fundamentalism

"Green's warped imagery, and the way he plays everything to the hilt, cover up the fact that there's real emotions in his songs, real feelings of confusion and loneliness. Occasionally, in the middle of a song, those feelings will come across in a completely pure way, where you realize that he's not winking or joking in any way. Then a few seconds later he'll be singing about someone biting his cock."

Pop Matters

"There’s a lot more behind the rude words to be discovered only by people with the perception and persistence to discover. So, “Carolina,” far from being a piece of scatological sniggering, is actually about coming to terms with a girlfriend’s abortion. Deeper than dirty water."

Stylus

The thing is, this is liking Green for the wrong reasons. If you wanted deep and heartfelt stuff about abortions, I'm sure you could find more of it elsewhere. But I am prepared to think that the absurdist, fuck-you nihilism of Green's shiny and bizarre cabaret music is bound to contain a repressed sincere other which is all the more powerful for being repressed. It's almost like a ghost we collectively create because we're so terrified of the idea of pure, playful nihilism, of "This means nothing at all, and it's great".

And now, my next nomination for the greatest lyricist working today (alongside Luke Haines, Momus, Merritt, Berman and myself):

Melora Creager of Rasputina.

Let's start a war.
Start a nuclear war,
At the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar.

Now tell me do you...
Do you have any money?
I want to spend all your money
At the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar.

I've got something to put in you.
I've got something to put in you.
I've got something to put in you
At the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar.

You're a superstar
At the gay bar.
You're a superstar
At the gay bar.
Yeah, you're a superstar.
Yeah at the gay bar.
You're a superstar at the gay bar.
Superstar.

Let the mocking commence.

Three! Ian Riese-Moraine stepped up, too!

Take Ladytron as an example. Are their lyrics GREAT? Not necessarily. But do they work? Yes. Postmodern lyrics don't need to be great in a classical sense; they merely need to work. We might appreciate depth in a given set of postmodern lyrics, but depth perhaps only works in a postmodern context if it helps to signify whatever is being signified (a postmodern evocation of classicism, for example).

Ahh, I did revisit it and mentioned Ian Crause of Disco Inferno. That's the best I can come up with out of the past ten years -- I can't think of anyone better that I've heard or heard about. What constitutes great lyrical content, though, if everyone has different standards about it? My standards are pretty strict and although I love a lot of music I can't think of any lyricist that's ever really fulfilled my idea of what would comprise an excellent set of lyrics. If someone does the following, they'll probably have penned my favourite song:

Avoid cliches at all costs
Manages to write songs where it looks as good in print as it does when spoken/sung
Writes elegantly (well, elegantly in this poster's eyes), being eloquent without being flowery -- yes, it's possible!
Writes so well that you can sing their lyrics without feeling stupid and embarrassed for singing them
Makes their writing almost drunkenly and harrowingly emotional without being overly dramatic -- or they manage to make the personal feel global without making the issues in the song become public emergencies
Makes one willingly reflect on the composition after the fact by provoking the mind naturally

Postmodernism's laughable failure is that this was also true of lyrics in Plautus's day. It's been true of all art, always. However, lyrics that work & are also "great in a classical sense" are generally better than lyrics that work yet suck on the page, etc

Yeah, that's fine. I wasn't meaning to imply that postmodernism was the first instance in history where efficacy was more significant than depth and virtuosity.

But why is this topic relevant to this thread, given that dog latin wants us talking about lyrics in popular music, which, whether or not they achieve the classical virtues (whatever those are), rarely make the claim of even attempting those virtues? ("Depth" and "virtuosity" are just regular old virtues, or defects, rather than specifically classical ones.)

Pet pet
Don't you get het het
Don't get het up
Don't get het up pet

Drink the deep blue blank
You hunk of woman
Or return to
Your favorite clinic
Like a good cynic

Nervous on drugs
Lie on the lino
Whine like a wino

Just another beach scenario
Spoiled by a sack of potatoes

Pet pet
Don't get het het
Don't get het up pet
Don't get het up pet

And if a model of lyrical greatness as, say, Leonard Cohen, Caetano Veloso, etc., remains in people's minds, I don't know to what extent it's relevant with regard to postmodern music

Frank, you are right about Courtney Love, at her best. She's very lucid and wickedly funny.

Jay-Z is genius. Just the sound of the language the way he uses it amazes me, and he gets away with a truly epic level of arrogance by being incredibly witty about it, always.

Re: Finn, Green. I agree with Momus. Maybe I won't like the Adam Green album but it sounds like he is taking risks. I don't see how Finn is, and that's not interesting to me.

Oh, I really don't think that's true at all. This whole "nothing has ever changed throughout history" idea can be ludicrously overstated. What would Aristotle make of the lyrics (excellent in their way) to Martin Creed's songs for his band Owada? Aristotle, without having a chance to read up on postmodernism and contemporary art, would be completely flummoxed and think we were all totally insane.

New things do happen! Postmodernism isn't one of them though, it's just a catch-all describing some very old reading methods. And maybe writing methods, not sure about that.

for example, it was the Greeks who pointed this out by telling the same stories over & over again, and the whole polis understood that telling the story (say) of the Trojan Women meant one thing in peacetime & quite another in war. But it wasn't the Greeks who "discovered" this radical fact. It is, in fact, radical in a real sense: it's right there at the root. We knew that we could tell the same story twice to different effect when we lived in the trees. Postmodernism longs to feel special, so it attributes this radix librorum to its own cleverness.

"As an artistic movement, it is the umbrella term for those movements that followed "modernism". Modernism, as an artistic movement, refers to those schools (impressionist, expressionist, surrealist, cubist, etc.) prominent from about 1880 to about 1940. Postmodernism is, therefore, essential post-WW II art, especially post-60s art. Postmodernism, as a philosophical movement, is usually associated with the "post-structuralists" of French philosophy - the generation that came to prominence in the late 60s and early 70s..." etc

As for best lyricst, I'm honestly not sure. There is no lyricist I like that could be objectively be called "the best." With rock, it's all entertainment value to me.

So: Charlie Patton? Leadbelly? Louis Prima? Elvis Presley? the Beatles? Led Zeppelin? (or maybe not, since I'm not at all sure what you mean by "decontextualized.")

James this is kinda my point! Art has been doing the "postmodernism" mambo since we emerged from our caves; postmodernism is a critical school that found a way to describe an inherent tendency in art. So, any writer whose sense of genre is in constant play is a postmodernist: hence Sterne, Nashe, Chaucer, Rabelais, Petronius, Sophocles, Plautus, et al

Yeah, before the 60s artists were seizing on other forms of music, and I would suggest this anticipated post-modernism. But since the 60s, pastiche has become more and more common, arriving at its apex recently. I would say the Clash drawing on black Caribbean music is very much a post-modern phenomenon, even if, sure these kind of appropriations happened during the build-up to the 1960s. And, of course, many of the artists you named are very much a part of the "post modern" era.

By "decontextualized," I mean music completely reappropriated, completely removed from its origins, cultural, geographic, political, or otherwise, and generally through technology. White dub, for example, or a country westerm song from Faith No More. Pastiche and parody is the name of the game.

Like e.g. if we're conflating postmodernism with post-structuralism and deconstruction (which it appears we are) then someone like De Man would say that pre-modern texts actually deconstruct themselves, whereas Derrida says no, deconstruction doesn't exist until he invented it. In this debate Banana is like De Man, saying that a lot of stuff was postmodern before we could call it that; Momus is like Derrida, saying that these things aren't actually postmodern until situated within the historical category of postmodernism (ie. art in postmodernity).

Tim you have made me very happy since De Man is my favorite of the whole lot (rather obviously I guess!)

thought I got love for Derrida too, as he invented breakdancing

Always was. (Buchanan and Goodman to thread.)

Basically, I get the idea what you call "post-modernism" (pastiche and parody and etc) most pop music fans have generally tended to call "pop music."

(Also, maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't there plenty of Black Caribbean music in England for the Clash to draw on? Yes, I think there was. So how that makes them any different from Elvis - who may or may not have heard all the genres he eventually wound up incorporating back in Tupelo -- is kind of beyond me.)

Puke.

Yeah, I agree that postmodernism and pop music are basically contiguous. In fact, my personal (and arbitrary) start point for pomo is 1956, which many also count as the start point for pop music as we know it today. However (and perhaps we should be talking about this on another thread) I think pop music has been more obviously postmodern than rock music. It's one of the biggest ironies around that when popular music wants to be taken seriously it invokes the buzzwords of a dead art movement rather than a living one. For instance, prog's claims to high art were based on the Romantic ideology of the genius artist, and on templates taken from 19th century classical music. Rock continues, to this day, to work with the Romantic ideology (authenticity, Coleridge-like drug transcendence, espousing political causes Lord Byron-style, etc etc) whereas pop continues to embody postmodern ideas (no depth, no high-low distinctions, etc). Contrary to what most critics believe, this makes rock, by virtue of its very claim to seriousness, much more kitsch than pop. In terms of my thoughts about Adam Green, I think it's terribly funny that people think Green is kitsch and Coldplay aren't.

I don't think stylistic use necessarily means postmodernism. Were there not, in fact, a lot of examples of modernism involving inspiration from "ethnic" or "primitive" art? Non-Eurocentric art was even perceived AS modernism (as with, say, tropicalismo).

I believe that the distinction with postmodernism is that the art is more about style itself. The goal is accuracy and embodiment of style. Text is only relevant to the extent that it also signifies style.

The Clash had a lot to say. I don't think theirs was just a postmodern evocation of reggae. Compare this with seriously postmodern groups whose only message is STYLE STYLE STYLE and references to pre-existing artworks, as with the Rapture or Acid Mothers Temple.

Thanks Momus. I am thinking now about your post on Adam Green. Why is it better for things to work in an art gallery, though? What is it about an art gallery?

Those critics you cite sound more like Victorians to me.

jus' playin :)