But sometimes the lyrics can get your attention.

MUSIC

lyrics

Music

Lyrics

well, yeah!, plus it's a whole lot easier to describe words than to describe music. you can, in fact, just write the words right there in your review. you can't write the music in your review (unless you're at some fancy-pants guitar-player magazine maybe).

ooooh, explain more please :) i mean i can see how it could be more difficult to value music in terms of relevance but what do you mean by relevance? relevance in western society/culture ('Where Is The Love' was relevant maaaan - or was it?)

Lyrics are the musicians (semi-)concious stab at 'meaning'. Of course, the music affects the meaning of the lyrics (and vice versa) but the words are where the a general meanign is made more specific (or changed - eg 'happy' songs with 'sad' lyrics). So that is why lyrics receive more 'critical' attention.

But I think that a lot of time the lyrics are ignored in favour of 'this rocks/this is shite/this is classic/this is what the band have to say/this is the story behind the making of the music'.

Some would say Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen. Not me though, I hate those old bastards.

...BUT, as true as that seems for me, it's not that simple. In part because an evocative line from the lyrics of a song can lodge in my brain and inspire or haunt me just as forcefully as a melody or groove or texture.

More fundamentally still: pop music needs songs, and songs need lyrics. I love some wordless genres -- techno and such -- but pop songs remain a huge part of what I listen to. I've been thinking a lot lately about how essential words and singing are to pop -- how you can't substitute an instrumental line for the vocals without a "muzak effect" in which the substance of the music is somehow diminished.

I really don't think it's just down to the sonics of the voice. (I can confirm this for myself by imagining wordless vocals in place of the actual singing in a pop song.) It has more to do, I think, with the rhythms of language, which are naturally more irregular than the rhythms of music. So lyrics make demands on the music, forcing it to accomodate more interesting rhythmic shapes. Take away the lyrics, transfer these same rhythms to an instrumental line, and the danger is that those same rhythms seem unmotivated and therefore "cheesy."

So if I reformulate the original question as: which can you tolerate more, pop music with the lyrics subtracted, or pop-music lyrics isolated from the music, well, it's a more pointed question I suppose. But thinking about it in those terms -- despite my instinctive "music > lyrics" vote -- I'd have to say neither is really satisfactory without the other.

But it was really just a thought experiment to make my point that these two facets of pop are inseperable.

Also reflects what it's like to read all the "post your favorite lyrics" threads here on ILM -- none of it really seems moving or powerful in isolation. That fact alone would argue, maybe, that music > lyrics, but my point was: taking the lyrics away from the music also impoverishes the result, maybe just as much.

yeah, but he didn't actually write Do They Know It's Christmas?

is thre any notable rock band that has a greater divide between gripping music and horrifying lyrics as u2 so often does?

I'm gonna go with music though. I think it's true about writers citing lyrics because, well, it's easy to reference, even if within the framework of the song it's not so much the lyrics themselves but how they're delivered that matters. Which is why lyrically weak U2 like "Walk On" or Marvin Gaye can be lifted above the material as it is on paper, via the performance. I've always felt that great music can redeem bad lyrics, but terrible music can't be saved by a great lyric (unless there's some example I'm not thinking of)

U2 are the house music of rock. (Or maybe not, I honestly haven't listened to much U2 in ages.)

but why i balk is because in a great song the lyrics and music are working in tandem, in any song with lyrics in fact

i can't listen to black metal largely because the subject matter embarrasses me

i want to reach out
and touch the flame

I think this is a great point.

why do you think that Gear! ?

Bono's written some great great lyrics, and some bad ones - who hasn't?

MBV: 'To Here Knows When'
Outkast: 'BOB'