TS: Lyrics of Paul Simon vs. lyrics of Joy Division

We should post bits of PS and JD lyrics and see if people can work out which is which without google-ing.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease

vs

Take a chance and step outside.
Lose some sleep and say you tried.

Apples v. Oranges.

Got to be kidding.

Diamonds on the Dead Souls of her Shoes

El Condor Passover

Duncan Will Tear Us Apart

Me & Julio Lost Control

Feelin' Gloomy

^^^ winner

res do you wanna bear out why one would compare the two? I can see how it might be interesting, but at the same time I don't think they're really working in the same factory

I'm interested in how others view the relative profundity or shallowness of the lyrics, if one seems juvenile while the other seems developed and literate, etc.

Personally I tend to find Paul Simon's lyrics evocative and often profound, expressing the simultaneous joys and pains of being human, and perhaps of feeling lost in the universe, but always with some level of gentle reassurance ("Boy in the Bubble" and "America" come immediately to mind), but Joy Division's on the other hand, feel angsty and high-schoolish to me-- mostly the kind of shit that gothy teenagers would write while they're sorting out their adolescent woes.

My friend feels sort of the opposite, that Paul Simon's lyrics have the immediate appearance of being literate, but over time reveal themselves as shallow and lacking substance-- while Joy Division's might appear lame initially but on reflection are, in his words, "deep."

I'm kinda with J0hn - the two have really starkly different lyrical approaches. at his best Simon is a storyteller with an eye for detail and a definite sense of place and time. JD's lyrics are way more abstracted, generalized, opaque.

the dangling in the kitchen conversation

well i think yr both kind of right, i mean just with the example quoted above, i think its obvious that JD is more minimalist, lyrically: in the end its probably what surrounds the lyrics thats gonna have the ultimate effect on yr judgment, which is why these guys are musicians & not poets (not saying its not interesting to debate lyrics but this is admittedly a bit off the wall)

as for what JD is expressing, yeah of course its angsty & high-schoolish, but rock n roll is sort of made for that kind of thing xps

Simon is always dropping names (Julio, Kathy, Betty/Al), places (59th St bridge, the New Jersey turnpike, New York, LA, etc.) to convey the sense that his stories are occurring in a fully populated world with lots of walk-ons from random characters (the cop, the kids in the street, "a raisin who occasionally plays LA") and bits of conversational dialogue. JD never does this, ever - everything is abstracted to he/she or I/you and the imagery used is much less specific and finely detailed. I guess both like to convey messages of alienation and depression but that's kind of universal subject matter - they don't deal with them in similar ways at all.

oy Division's on the other hand, feel angsty and high-schoolish to me-- mostly the kind of shit that gothy teenagers would write while they're sorting out their adolescent woes.

I think this isn't really so, for what it's worth - I think you're lumping them in with their latter image, and I think the respect accorded Curtis as a lyricist is well-deserved - I say this as a person who isn't really ga-ga over Joy Division like most of my peers are; I like them fine, but they didn't change my life. The one area where I think you must give them their propers though is stuff like this:

Existence, well, what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can.
The past is now part of my future
The present is well out of hand

It's dark, sure - even relentlessly so. But that doesn't equate to "juvenile"; plenty of great writers in their maturity decided that darkness was the only thing worth looking into. Ian Curtis was well on his way to becoming a great lyricist - even a song like "Decades" that has some heavy-handed stuff has flashes of restraint that many lyricists would be proud to put their names to ("We knocked on doors of Hell's darker chambers/Pushed to the limits, we dragged ourselves in" - you may point fingers and LOL at a guy who says he "knocked on the doors of Hell's darker chambers," but the construction of the line is remarkably solid and resonant, and the rejoinder is straight-up gorgeous). At the end of the day this is kind of like comparing Carl Sandburg to Rimbaud, I think. Or to take another example:

When routine bites hard and ambitions are low
And resentment rides high but emotions won't grow
And we're changing our ways, taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again

Again, if you're going to insist that everything be rooted in adult real life, then you can say no, love can't actually tear anything apart. It's just a feeling. But Ian Curtis was really just a kid, and his later lyrics suggest that he was truly gifted and was maturing at a dizzying pace. There's real insight in the conflict between "resentment rides high, but emotions won't grow" - that's good stuff. And yes, it has depth. It's not the "observing generalities of the world" depth that a writer like Paul Simon tends to prefer. But the two aren't at war; they're approaches to craft. Give Ian Curtis a full and long life and I'd put him up against Simon any day.

actually now that I think of it the parallels are Simon = Sandburg (Whitman if you'd rather), Curtis = Plath

nb I always thought it was "the past plays no part in my future" but can't find any sources online that agree

lololol @ poet anologies

because? Rimbaud/Plath both die young, are admired by the young & desperate, etc; Sandburg is the poet that people who don't read poetry might still own a book by (cf. the mythical "10-albums-a-year" buyer of yore, who always owned a copy of Graceland)

they're decent analogies sez me

not knockin ya, they are decent I was just amused by the idea of Plath and Curtis having an angst-ridden post-adolescent suicidal romance together

haha ok yeah

When routine bites hard and ambitions are low
And resentment rides high but emotions won't grow
When every single day is an endless stream
of filthy cigarettes and glamour magazines

Both are poets in that their language looks florid if we look for realism – it's figurative language in the best sense. The occasional clink in their verses is the price they pay for moving away from the Lou Reed I walked-into-the-room-and-sat-on-the-chair school of post-Nelson Algren verse.

It's dark, sure - even relentlessly so. But that doesn't equate to "juvenile"; plenty of great writers in their maturity decided that darkness was the only thing worth looking into.

It's hard for me to not instinctively equate the two when it reeks of hyperbole, though. Crossing the threshold of Hell? Seriously?

plath/rimbaud were also juvenile as fuck &, while i like their stuff, they did not have ROCKIN BEATS & martin hannett backing them

the Lou Reed I walked-into-the-room-and-sat-on-the-chair school of post-Nelson Algren verse.

hey take it easy buddy, what did I ever do to you

Crossing the threshold of Hell? Seriously?

-- res

this is kind of like comparing Carl Sandburg to Rimbaud,

Or Blake to Wordsworth, eh?

Crossed into the threshold of Hell vs. crossed into the threshold of late-afternoon Holland Tunnel outbound traffic.

The most fun part of this thread so far has been reading too quickly and skimming the italicized lyrics and imagining Ian Curtis and Paul Simon using each other's lyrics.

The cross is in the ballpark!
The cross is in the ballpark!
Ballpark!
Ballpark!
Ballpark!
Ballpark!

Yeah, I don't think Joy Division's lyrics are high school angsty. Nine Inch Nails, yeah. Joy Division is more like ... guy who is seriously troubled and can't get his head out of the shit.

angst: an acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom

I think it would apply to Joy Division, no? Some of Paul Simon's earlier lyrics would also apply, but I think there's always some consolation or redemption in there too.

rimbaud plath JD are all 'high school angsty' & theres nothing wrong with that

btw i like nirvana

yeah I think most poets would argue pretty strongly with you about whether rimbaud & plath at the very least don't bring a degree of maturity & depth to "high school angsty," not to say "advance it as an actual model for mature poetry"

Maybe it's just a personal association with the age at which I got into them but most JD lyrics always struck me as very post-adolescent in their angst, reflecting concerns of someone who's just left "the protection of infancy's guard" and is struggling with adult responsibilities, who actually has a past that can be part of his future.

Not all of it's brilliant but this:

mostly the kind of shit that gothy teenagers would write while they're sorting out their adolescent woes.

I mean, did you know actual goths when you were in high school? Did you read their poetry?

If it strikes him as such, does it matter if that's what HS goths really wrote?

this is like asking "if somebody imagined something, is it different from reality?"

I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand is some middle-aged Dante verse.

Midway the path of life that men pursue
I found me in a darkling wood astray,
For the direct way had been lost to view.

Ah me, how hard a thing it is to say
What was this thorny wildwood intricate
Whose memory renews the first dismay!

Scarcely in death is bitterness more great:
But as concerns the good discovered there
The other things I saw will I relate.

insofar as both Dante & Curtis are working in measures that scan beautifully & come off as effortless off-the-dome stuff, yeah for sure

http://www.mypodcast.com/fmimage-4-92317.jpeg

He's waiting for Virgil to come and take him by the hand!

yeah I think most poets would argue pretty strongly with you about whether rimbaud & plath at the very least don't bring a degree of maturity & depth to "high school angsty,"

I can't argue against the depth of Rimbaud's writing, but maturity seems like a stretch. He wrote like a teenager 'cuz he was one, and that's not a criticism of his work.

I mean, did you know actual goths when you were in high school? Did you read their poetry?

Yes, and yes. Also, check myspace for contemporary examples. It's all over the place, written by people calling themselves Ravenwood Windspear and shit. And I'm not saying that JD is run-of-the-mill goth poetry; examining the lyrics, they're certainly more restrained, which is a virtue for sure.

But again, what I'm coming back to is the insistence on dark hyperbole; the absolute, unyielding focus on the negative, whether it is the indictment of society or himself, without any ballast to give it believability or realism. And further, everything is so abstract that the lyrics almost seem like the writings of someone who has seen all the signifiers of dark poetry, and has imbibed the romantic appeal of that mystery and pain without experiencing the real turmoil of the originators of that style. Obviously, that may not really be the case, as evidenced by his suicide, but it always struck me that Curtis just followed the trajectory expected and demanded by his own myth-making.

everything is so abstract that the lyrics almost seem like the writings of someone who has seen all the signifiers of dark poetry, and has imbibed the romantic appeal of that mystery and pain without experiencing the real turmoil of the originators of that style. Obviously, that may not really be the case, as evidenced by his suicide, but it always struck me that Curtis just followed the trajectory expected and demanded by his own myth-making.

it's not assumed that it is; I said that it reads like it.

But again, what I'm coming back to is the insistence on dark hyperbole; the absolute, unyielding focus on the negative, whether it is the indictment of society or himself

it was good enough for many, many mature arists (Hardy et al)

The wasy I see it, Curtis wasn't writing poetry; he was writing song lyrics. Therefore, the musical function and incantatory power of the words is much more important than the way they scan when read. And Curtis wasn't just articulating feelings, he was contributing to a cooperative art practice that operated within a specific, modernist aesthetic. In that sense, his simple, alienated (therefore abstract) and mechanical lyrics were appropriate to the band and their moment.

I agree in general that art that fixates on an "adolescent" sort of angst and despair can seem limited, even silly, especially when it seems to heroicize or flaunt the art-pain. But Joy Division are too coherent and aesthetically appealing for me to dismiss them (or Curtis' lyrics) on those grounds.

I said that it reads like it.

hey take it easy buddy, what did I ever do to you

haha -- no hierarachy intended.

What is it about Curtis' writing that causes his lyrics to read like those of someone who has read about but not experienced, "the real turmoil of the originators of (dark poetry)"? Serious question.

Honestly, I can't really put my finger on it or articulate it in a way that would make sense But something about it reads sort of hollow to me.