Tunes you love, but the lyrics hamper your enjoyment (lets keep it apolitical eh?)

I'm very much a singalong guy, but there are some songs with immanently singable melodies and yet you feel silly singing due to the lyrical subject matter, for whatever reason.

"Paint A Vulgar Picture" may be Moz's single most singsong melody. But music industry talk says nothing to be about my life.

"Angeles" is Elliott Smith's best song, imo, but it's another industry lament and I can't really bring myself to sing along with it, because how do I relate?

Others? (And yes, let's omit examples based on political/ideological differences, for the love of all sentient beings)

Frank Zappa to thread.

Shoulda emphasized the "feel weird singing along" angle. Thread's a bit broad as it is, and has been covered.

Yeah with Zappa I can't enjoy in the first place

Songs that overuse "I don't know" or "I don't know why" ruins the magic of a nice tune because it's such cliche result of literally having no interesting thought to communicate. It's the go-to improv filler lyric, making it incredibly boring as the central premise of a song.

trying to figure out where improv lyric writing happens outside freestyle rap and... jazz?

i only listen to free jazz that has some guy in it going "uuuuuuuuhhh uuuuuuuh i don't know i don't know!!!! i told you guys i'm bad at improv!"

Pretty much every Manic Street Preachers song. The older I get, the more silly the lyrics look - including the first three albums.

"Roses" by Outkast has its hook on the lyric "roses really smell like poo-poo"

"open your mind" - away and fuck

xpost:

That's a great hook!

"Let's raise the bar/and our cups to the stars" sounds like it's sung from a skeevy yacht or Vegas pool party.

haha yeah that Outkast song makes me cringe

lots of Kendrick's stuff too. alternatively brilliant and ugh no

"Let's raise the bar/and our cups to the stars" sounds like it's sung from a skeevy yacht or Vegas pool party.

― dinnerboat, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 9:07 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM, but I also hate the way he sings "We're up all night to get SOME"

oh no I thought that song was about playing cards

I don't mean the sentiment, i mean the phrase "get some" and the way he awkwardly emphasizes "some"

so many of these it would be impossible to list
a recent one -- "magnet and steel"
a wave of disgust every time this goes through my head and yet it keeps going and going and going because it is so catchy

an old one -- "just what i needed" on account of the hair ribbons and the bleeding but it's such a great song :(

actually bleeding and feeding iirc? blecch

Hm, I actually really like those lyrics.

I feel like it's a pithy evocation of a really cold, detached user type. Undercuts an anthemic upbeat chorus with just a couple of lines.

it's not that i don't like them as much as they hamper my enjoyment because they make me feel gross when i sing them
both of these songs are perfectly fine, they just make me feel gross which thereby hampers my very real enjoyment of the song. imo it's more of an affliction rather than a commentary on the song itself.

Ah, I get you.

trying to figure out where improv lyric writing happens outside freestyle rap and... jazz?

― qualx, Wednesday, October 18, 2017 2:37 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What I mean is that when lyrics are thought up on the spot, defaulting with "I don't know" is common because it's an easy go-to, and there is a literal truth in regards to not knowing what to sing in that scenario. However, it is usually conveyed in actual songs as some kind of faux meaningful sentiment in whatever context is implied (a complicated relationship, feelings about life, feelings about the future), but if that context isn't particularly insightful the "I don't know" easily becomes super boring and lazy given how often it becomes default lorem ipsum when you don't have a real idea.

Pretty much every week on my "Discover Weekly" playlist there's some also-ran from the 70s where they obviously had a top backing band in the studio and the groove is really nice but the songwriting is just meh and I can't get into it as a result. So this happens all the time with merely mediocre lyrics.

The other day I also heard Blake Mills' "It'll All Work Out" for the first time, and I was like "Hmm, this is kind of good," and then it got to "But she knew just how to make a quarterback smile" and I was like uhhhhhh, and then the part where he says his dad was "Tryin' to keep the checkbook tighter Than a duck's ass going down a waterslide" and I turned it off.

Honestly, it's rare for me that lyrics get in the way if I love the tune.

"Paint a Vulgar Picture" is not a song I'd have thought of for this category, sure there's music industry complaints but I find it tremendously moving when the narrative switches to the heartbroken young fan.

I love the lyrics to that one, as much for their sound and flow as for what they say.

re: Blake Mills, his music always sounds great but "Don't Tell Our Friends About Me" is sketchy as fuck

I just noticed that B.I.B.L.E. by Killah/GZA has some fun anti-abortion lyrics

Champagne Supernova

oh the WU guys can go terrible places (esp on lesser known material) but its usually schtick, if that matters xp

CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA otm. most Oasis songs, but that one especially

Men Without Hats - "Living In China"

just google it

haha no

yeah oasis is great for the "what the fuck am i singing right now" feeling

The Oasis lyrics don't bother me. I'd rather have nonsense that sounds good than wordy crap that sounds awkward.

You're not a Destroyer fan I guess

otm. "slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball" is fine. but sometimes noel gets a little ponderous e.g. "some might say that sunshine follows thunder/
go and tell it to the man who cannot shine" etc. actually CS is not a great example here i suppose

xp

I love Ziggy Stardust but “screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo like some cat from Japan” always makes me cringe.

Talking of Bowie, is it "Time" that has that line, "falls wanking to the floor" because ugh.

Revive of a Manics thread has reminded me of 'PCP' on The Holy Bible, "When I was young PC meant police constable / Nowadays I can't seem to tell the difference"

Anderson Paak's lyrics on NxWorries are pretty sleazeball and condescending, not to mention hypocritical (H.A.N.), but that delivery and those beats are pretty choice.

Is CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA actually wtf and/or about nothing as Noel himself says? I feel it does have a meaning or theme: people splitting apart as they get older. “Where were you while we were getting high” is about a friend who is done fooling around with her old friends and is moving on with her life. The “walking slowly down the hall faster than a cannonball” line Noel says it’s just there because it rhymes but I actually think it’s deep even if it was accidental. I interpret it as how you feel like life is going slow but it’s actually going fast specially when you are younger and suddenly you look back and it’s gone. Like a champagne supernova in the sky. The whole song is about this feeling of the summer in your life ending and clinging to it before letting go.

Hitted submit post before finishing that thought.

The caught beneath the landslide is the memories, the nostalgia. The champagne supernova makes the memories look brighter than they actually were, you’re trying to make them come back, you feel immortal but it will fade too.

I actually think it’s one of their prettiest lyrics somehow.

His explanation of the song is actually more wtf than the lyrics and I guess he was drunk or high when he said this as it’s the everyday gallagher looney bullshit (wouldn’t be the first time a gallagher shows up in that state on an interview):

When I was writing that, I remember going to visit Meg, who was living with some chicks down in Maida Vale, in her old flat. I was living in a hotel in Marylebone High Street and had just been kicked out of my flat in Chiswick, for being drunk and disorderly. Anyway, I went over to Meg´s. I wasn´t seeing her, she was just a mate and, this may sound really corny but I had the music and melody for the song in my head but I didn´t have any words. While I was around there we were listening to a Pixies album called, I think it´s... Supernova. As we were listening to this album, we were watching a documentary about where they make Champagne in France. You may laugh but it´s true. I was there drunk going, `Champagne supernova? Yeah man´ and to this day, everyone´s going, `But what does it mean?´. I can´t be arsed to explain it cos it sounds really corny. Some of the lyrics were written when I was out of it. There´s the words: `Someday you will find me caught beneath a landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky.'"

"Some of the lyrics were written when I was out of it. There's the words: 'Someday you will find me/ Caught beneath a landslide/ ln a Champagne Supernova in the sky'. That's probably as psychedelic as I'll ever get. It means different things when I'm in different moods. When I'm in a bad mood being caught beneath a landslide is like being suffocated. The song is a bit of an epic. It's about when you're young and you see people in groups and you think about what they did for you and they did nothing. As a kid, you always believed the Sex Pistols were going to conquer the world and kill everybody in the process. Bands like The Clash just petered out. Punk rock was supposed to be the revolution but what did it do? F all. The Manchester thing was going to be the greatest movement on earth but it was f all. When we started we decided we weren't going to do anything for anybody, we Jut thought we'd leave a bunch of great songs. But some of the words are about nothing. One is about Bracket The Butler who used to be on Camberwick Green, or Chipley or Trumpton or something. He used to take about 20 minutes to go down the hall. And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with 'hall' apart from 'cannonball'. so I wrote 'Slowly walking down the hall/ Faster than a cannonball' and people were like, 'Wow, f , man'. There's also the line 'Where were you while we were getting high?' because that's what we always say to each other. But the number of people who've started clubs called Champagne Supernova is f ing unbelievable. And the album isn't even released yet."

I'm a grad of the Bernard Sumner School of Advanced Lyric Writing, so it takes a lot to bug me.

And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with 'hall' apart from 'cannonball'

just wanna pull this line out and marvel at it in isolation for a bit

Cali by Ride, off the new album. Specifically this bit, but it's all shit:

"You look good with blue sky behind
Silhouetted in the bright sunshine
Burned onto my retina screen
The greatest thing I've ever seen"

There are numerous other lyrics on the Ride album that make me wince.

that reminds me, "any minute you will feel the chemistry" is a pretty great opening line

'Domino Dancing' is one of my favourite Pet Shop Boys songs and for the most part I like the lyrics fine but for some reason the lines "Add another number/To the score" just stick out as really clunky.

somewhat related: my ex would get visibly annoyed when i would play "getting away with it" because of the "i love you more than you love me" line cuz it was actually true