Music and Politics Sub-Question: Content-Cramming

Ach, I was going to offer lyrics but I can't find them on the web and my record is in the car. Summary: first-person narrative; man is jealous of brother who he perceives to be father's favorite; man kills brother, is arrested and jailed; man says he got the idea from the Bible, i.e. Cain / Abel; people protest at jail with placards reading "Should the Bible be banned?" This is all accomplished very efficiently and surprisingly non-clumsily, really, and while it's doesn't culminate with a particular thesis it very clearly makes the traditional points about censorship and the Old Testament being as horrid as anything published this century and on a larger scale the whole idea that religion has led people to just as much evil as anything else. (None of these are blindingly original points, obviously, but the point is that McCarthy-guy has very neatly packed them into a normal-type pop song.)

Other skill of McCarthy guy -- brilliant moves w/r/t doing traditional pop-music character-sketch songs about political figures or political archetypes.

As I'm listening to a live version of "Head Like a Hole" by NIN right now, I fear my mind is directed mostly to bitter slogans instead of coherent political thought. ;-)

My mutterings on lyrics having been made elsewhere, I've no disagreement with the general point being made. I don't necessarily think hip-hop can do more by having more words, mind you -- if anything it would seem to allow for extrapolation rather than expansion, if you will.

I think I need to quote the lyrics to (my old standby) "Cosmetic Plague" by Rudimentary Peni here. The song is almost exactly a minute long, and this is how it goes (you need to imagine Nick Blinko screaming it at the top of his lungs, and his voice very nearly giving out right before the end): "Being honest is no means of survival/Avoid your inner feelings like the plague/This is what it takes to comply with the images the structure will accomodate/But things aren't what they seem when they're partially hidden behind walls of pretense built for peace of mind/The barriers between us are forever maintained by our acceptance of the roles others choose to define/In a world of competition life's portrayed as a contest where we're forced to live by making gains at others' expense/But no one's really gaining when perpetual conflict's the result of our relationships based on pretense/ We don't need this cultural cosmetic division/It upholds the self- interest on which the system feeds/A deconditioned consciousness of mutual respect is the only way to cure this cosmetic disease."

Or does that count more as "social"? In that case, substitute Dog Faced Hermans' "Hear The Dogs," which is explicitly about immigration policy, and rocks. Preferably the live version.

My two cents (undervalued I know). It depends on how you treat Pop. I think most will de-contextualize it. Just enjoy it on its own. Not listen to the lyrics. Hence the inability of Pop changing said listener. Nonetheless I do think Pop can be relevant. Also, I have heard lots of Hip Hop fans saying they don't listen to the words. Hence the reason I think the importance of Hip Hop as a political instrument to be overstated (as opposed to Pop which is underrated). I do think that it is capable of macro-statements. But how much it is a reflection of society (as opposed to influencing/changing) I don't know. I am probably replying to my - and not your - question. Whatever.

Crass - that one with the chorus that goes "And what if I told you to fuck off?" Not sure what their 'point' is, but it sounds like THEY know what it is, does that count?

Nitsuh your question as usual has me firing up big thoughts and marshalling evidence but it's late and none of it's coming out right so let me just say for now that I've never bought the premise that personal stories and big political ones are mutually exclusive.

nor even two different things, really.

(since he cropped up on another thread)

What makes Richey Manic's lyrics bad: they read like notes taken in a university politics lecture.

What makes them good: the way the biro's pressed that bit too hard onto the pad, the way you feel like you're glancing over at the kid next to you in the lecture, and you reckon that on the page before might be a perfectly-composed alpha-grade essay, and that on the page after is "ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES RICHEY A DULL BOY" written a hundred times.

(in plainer English: I like the lyrics on THB because they mix up the personal and political - the strong impression is that thinking politically is the structure the lyricist (and of course it wasn't all Richey) is using to keep himself together, and that this structure is unravelling. The hint of an argument on "Revol" for instance is made more intriguing and disturbing by the suspicion that the argument were it to be made would be entirely mad.)

If you look at it from an RD Laing-ian perspective then 'Revol' is the only sane world-model-building response tho!

"Butyric Acid" by Consolidated seesm to jam alot of political sloganeering and arguements into a song, but I cant figure out if thats a rap song or otherwise. The related Disposible Hereos of Hiphoprisy tend to have a couple of political rants, Winter Of The Long Hot Summer (which he doesnt really rap on) and California Über Alles (which he does).
Seems ranting and roaring over a hip hop beat seems to take on political viewpoints with greater ease then rock or a full out rap format.

nick blinko's actual "political" point is rubbish, obv – i must drag out my rp lps and see whether their sound aesthetic cuts against or amplifies the rubbishness (cuts against = more interesting to me, ie you learn something the world that the artists isn't expecting you to or intending)

I can think of some great political art that is (pretty much) nothing but sloganeering, but quite a lot of good political songs do not provide sloganeering, much less a coherent argument. They are not argumentative but illustrative of some political point. They do not offer reasons for the rightness or wrongness of a political pov, but dramatize the conditions bought about by political program X or Y: the workings of minds under poverty, despair, alienation, say.

(While, as Nitsuh says, hip-hop has the opportunity to smoke suckas wit logic because it uses way more words than yr average pop song, it might actually be more effective as political art when it’s in illustrative than argumentative mode.)

(A good political argument in song form is as uniquely and unusually satisfying as a pop song with “classical” structure cf. Stephin Merritt.)

I listen to Fugazi.

Agreed that a popsong ain't the best place for a long political disquisition -- but in terms of capturing a mood of a movement, a feeling -- not convincing but affirming -- there are few better tools. Cf. the history of American folk music, the history of labor songs, the IWW's notorious little red songbook, the music of the 60s from Dylan (Blowin in the wind -- what did it say? next to nothing, but what did it mean to listeners -- sometimes everything) to &c. to my hometown hardcore punk band who led singalong chants of "we don't wanna be in your stupid war" (this was in a rare period between wars, actually, as I recall).

Cf The Coup, who have nice albums, but who you ain't seen if you ain't seen jamming for 500 inner-city high school students protesting for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

It depends on how you treat Pop. I think most will de- contextualize it....I have heard lots of Hip Hop fans saying they don't listen to the words.

Around the time that Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" was at the peak of its popularity in the U.S., an acquaintance who seemed to have made a fetish of his political identification as a libertarian, told me something along the lines of "the song rocks, even though the lyrics suck." He seemed to have grasped the song's argument, but it clearly had made no impact on his previous attitudes.

Since then I try to remember that (1) the average music listener doesn't always pay attention to the lyrics, or hear them correctly ("S'cuse me while I kiss this guy!") and (2) even if a listener understands the lyrics will probably not be persuaded to change his or her opinions solely on the basis of the song.

M. Daddino is right, it's not about the # of words - just listen to flower power crap from the sixties that has a lot of words and still means nothing. It's the idiom which allows for getting at things in ways that some other musical idioms don't.

the average music listener doesn't always pay attention to the lyrics

I'd argue it's far more than simply a putative average...

Nitsuh I think what you're really asking isn't "when does the political work in pop?" (ha ha though of course you DID) but rather "can analytical and often statistical" approaches to meaning work in a pop song? Since techno probably doesn't count, I'd have to say... no.

Well, there's these:

"I like to party fucking hard. I like my rock and roll the ssame. Don't give a fuck if I burn out. Don't give a fuck if I fade away. So back to the motor leagues with me before I'm forced to face the wrath of a well-heeled buying public who live vicariously through tortured-artist college-rock and floor-punching macho pabulum. Back to the motor leagues I go. Once thought I drew a lucky hand. Turned out to be a live grenade of play-acting 'anarchists' and Mommy's-little-skinheads, death-threats and sycophants and wieners drunk on straight-edge. Fuck off. Who cares? I'd rather hi-lite Trip-Tiks than listen to your bullshit. Fuck off. Who cares about your stupid scenes, your shitty zines, the straw-men you build up to burn. It never ceases to amaze me and as I'm suffering your perfection it reminds me of my own race to redress my own sad history of mouthed feet. Eaten hats. Teated bulls. Amish phone-books. Drunken brawls. But what have we here? 15 years later it still reeks of swill and chickenshit conformists with their fists in the air; like-father, like-son 'rebels' bloated on korn, eminems and bizkits. Lord, hear our prayer: take back your Amy Grant mosh-crews and your fair-weather politics. Blow-dry my hair and stick me on a ten-speed. Back to the motor league."

Line-breaks might make the song's actual rhythms, which are pretty great, come through better, but the booklet doesn't supply 'em. It's Propagandhi who (along with some Randy Newman stuff) make a pretty decent argument for non-sloganeering political songs that take complexities into account while articulating a valid stance. N.B. this is really only true on "Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes." The previous one is pretty much all slogans.

i'm sorry john, but i just went back and read the lyrics to "less talk, more rock" (available on their website, which was nice of them since i got rid of the album some time ago) and they're all pretty uniformly embarassing. perhaps they're embarassing because they're too earnest, and a bit too...hardline? there seems little to no room for ambiguity there - which may not be the point, mind - but doesn't keep adult me interested. (teenage me was a different story. just hearing certain songs - as songs - by the dead kennedys or subhumans was enough to turn my head. the ideas may have been fairly "one dimensional" but the execution and presentation was such as to be undeniable to 14 yr old jess.)

ian penman: Years ago I had a very earnest conversation with The Pop Group's Mark Stewart after I criticised his group in print for their turn away from fevered mysticism ("We Are All Prostitutes"). He said: but what should you do if you have a political conscience and are engaged in the business of making songs and want your songs to register this conscience? I said - I sketchily described - an Ideal Song in which any political inclination could only be registered as a trace of confusion or ambiguity; that if politics was daily ruined for us by being dully ground out in the language of Authority then any counter-cultural motion must find an entirely new language. He said: well, what examples do you have of this? I had to say: none, really, because what I describe is a dreamed song, and there just aren't any real ones around at the moment. Sorry.

he heard it in tricky. i sure as hell didn't. maybe i'm still looking for it. it might be an impossible dream, but a better one than most others.

Suddenly I'm imagining some electro chanteuse just reading Nation editorials in a bored-sexy Teutonic monotone.

Why do politics have to be oppositional though? Merle Haggard's "Fightin' Side of Me" delivers a coherent argument, not that any of you pinkos would notice.

Though Haggard's "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" is arguably a more profound political realization than "Fightin' Side," one must give props to the latter, in which Haggard addresses his strawman as "Hoss."