Should bands have "something to say?"

Social commentary=another great irrelevence like anything other than the music coming from the speakers. who cares what the silly artist wants to say. I'll be the judge of that.

Do any of you find that social commentary adds to or enhances a band's greatness?

If it drives them to create music that connects for me, then that's fantastic. But that's about it, really.

i'd be surprised if this hasn't come up here before,since while efforts to find a universally liked or loathed song have looked doomed to failure (last time i looked at those threads,anyway),i'm fairly sure that the one statement everyone here would disagree with is that bands should have something to say...not that there's anything wrong with having something to say,but to criticise a group for not having some sort of political message seems absurd to say the least...also,as mentioned,often having something to say is what irritates-i'm a fairly big primal scream fan,and would probably agree vaguely with their politics,but they come across really badly as a result of their revolutionary posturing,and it is in my opinion the worst thing about them...i think the fact that kevin shields was making beautiful music is certainly enough in itself,and i'm sure he would agree,although who knows,maybe this review is the true cause of his joining primal scream :)

what about hip hop?

Sometimes having something to says works, like Dylan in his folk '60s phase, though he claimed that he was just writing what the people wanted to hear, fitting into the cultural zeitgeist, thus something to say = promotion technique. Marvin Gaye in What's Going On had something to say politically (and lots to say about a marriage break up in Hear, My Dear) while other interesting '70s "activists" include The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised). Jumping ahead, PE had a hell of a lot to say, I think for them the medium and the message went hand in hand...

That review is so funny, the reviewer hoping that KS will all of a sudden see the light and start writing songs about welfare mothers or something. Perhaps there's a bootleg here in the making MBV + Marvin Gave...

Could you expand on it? There's a lot of critical baggage about how as an approach it's supposed to be more intrinsically 'socially relevant,' however defined, but that seems to be wishful thinking to a large extent.

My response being towards Cybele re: hip-hop, I should note.

"Perhaps there's a bootleg here in the making MBV + Marvin Gave..." Yes it's called Husker Du: "What's going on... inside my head!!!!?"

Why exactly do people restrict the "something to say" idea to the much more particular "something to say about current-day socio- political situations?" It seems to me that Shields, for instance, had quite a bit to say about music and aesthetics more generally, a fact I'm offering not so much as a Wilde-style "art for art's sake" argument but more because, as ILM has demonstrated time and time again, aesthetics aren't necessarily as disconnected from socio- political concerns as some of us would like to think.

Actually, if I remember correctly, Rachel Felder made a lengthy argument in Manic Pop Thrill about shoegazing as a direct response to early-nineties culture and politics. Unfortunately it was a pretty tenuous argument: I think she originally wrote the manuscript as a dissertation, and thus shoehorned in loads of sort of grasping material about high art and Frederic Jameson in a bid to give her pretty straight-up rock criticism a veneer of academic credibility.

NME is perhaps referring to 'meaning' in the strict informational sense: postulating a state of affairs, e.g., "human rights abuses are bad." But the meaning of (good) music is a bit more subjective and universal than that. The messages that music contains are tensions and ambiguities, not flat representational statements.

Music explores human experience in a compelling and atomic way (that's atomic in the Democritus sense: un-break-downable into smaller units). It presumably allows us listeners to reflect on our lives. A piece of music can certainly illuminate subjectivities in a critical way, and thus have a moral effect, but a complex, resonant one.

There is plenty of good music with overt political statements (punk is the first genre that springs to mind), as well as plenty of crap. But you'd have to have a pretty stunted aesthetic sense to attack MBV for lacking such statements.

Obviously the above isn't to say that some aesthetic gestures have a lot more non-aesthetic stuff to say than others: Os Mutantes using electric guitars perhaps "said" more than Dylan using electric guitars, and both "said" more than the bulk of bands ever manage to say. My point was more that aesthetics are as much a part of life as politics, and the fact that politics are more life-or-death important doesn't mean we're all beholden to talk about them exclusively -- and we shouldn't be particularly surprised that musicians may have a bit more interesting things to say about the "art" portion of life than the other bits. It's a phony division to pretend that there's art that's about art and art that's about life: for consumers of art, art is a part of life.

Pop music in particular is really all about the clear and intuitive conversion of aesthetic shifts into cultural ones: does anyone doubt that the kid who responds to one artist over another is responding on some level to an "actual" "real-life" set of cultural identifications and values, even if neither of the artists is explicitly proclaiming anything about those values? Isn't part of the fun of purely aesthetic innovation that no matter how abstracted it sort of implies a world outside itself, a world in which it would normally "belong," a world that becomes part of the framework of your imagination and thus sort of affects your perceptions of what the real world is or should be like? Isn't that half of the point of art as communication -- isn't that what allows art that doesn't contain verbal texts to still be meaningful? (Can't instrumental bands have "something to say?")

Which is possibly my way of saying that all bands are saying something, whether they want to or not. Whether they should be saying something newer or different or more relevant to populist culture or whatever -- that's sort of up to us to decide.

Sorry, Paul, that was an afterthought and not a response to your comments (with which I agree).

Does NME have "somthing to say?" What's their position on the vanishing middle class in Argentina?

its a very narrow definition of 'something to say' that is the problem. how is 'something to say' actually defined - don't all things have something to say. oh, but then it might not be easily signposted digestible chunks of backslapping self-congratulatory rhetoric, right?

THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL DUDES!

arguments like this nme one are really annoying because they want to make you recourse to beethoven or stockhausen or coltrane or larry levan or moodymann or something, and you think, wait, i don't need to use those rockist figures to back my argument up, they're forcing me to play by their rules, their definitions. who decides what is content anyway?

I don't like bands who have social commentary.

jel you like slayer!!

Well, it's (maybe) more "art" if the words have some meaning ... but jesus H. christ, why does every song have to be about sadness & injustice? I'm thinking a better song is one that takes you away from all that.

"Can't instrumental bands have "something to say?")"

Exactly. If the NME reviewer is to be consistent, he must automatically dock every instrumental album he reviews 2 marks, and re-iterate the need for more anlysis of the South African situation in every review.

I agree with pretty much everything I've read so far, but I was hoping there'd be at least one ILM who'll tell me I am a cynical wanker, and fight the corner of the NME reviewer. Anyone?

What the NME seems to want to say is 'this is a sonically lovely album but I find it emotionally vacuous' - a very common critical argument and one which (replacing 'sonically' for 'technically' sometimes) you find applied to a vast range of music. If the journalist had said that I'd definitely sympathise - I maybe wouldn't agree but I could see what they were on about.

The stupidity is picking 'political commentary' as the kind of emotional content that MBV could be doing. It's stupid for the reasons people have said above. It's also stupid because when critics suggest bands do something different from what they are doing they need to tread very carefully. Saying 'MBV should have more political content' is assuming that political content is a bolt-on good and not asking the (quite interesting) qn of what a politicised MBV would sound like - great or laughable?

Hmm I think this highlights some of the problems of discussing music.

I was thinking about early Ornette Coleman when I saw the title of this thread. I don't think he had much more to say than "this is very beautiful". But all the same there is an emotional integrity to the music that compensates for lack of any translatable "meaning".

MBV seem to aim at a similar kind of sonic beauty. But the emotions aroused by it seem to me facile by comparison. (Unlike MBV I never imagine Ornette thinking "it would sound eerier if I did this".)

I wonder if the journalist is confusing the absence of emotional depth with the absence of meaning? It seems to me legitimate to criticise the first but not the second.

I think it's legitimate to criticise either but you need to make clear from the start that 'emotional depth' or 'meaning' is what you are looking to music to provide. And if you do that then an equally legitimate criticism is - 'wtf are you doing listening to an MBV album then?'. So for instance 'Woody Guthrie records don't have a very interesting use of FX pedals' is a legitimate criticism but an idiotic choice of critical object because it leads to the critic stating the bleedin' obvious.

'wtf are you doing listening to an MBV album then?

To find out what it was like?

I like this review a lot, the pre-flight apprehension image at the end especially. MBV are unsettling and anxiety-provoking. They are "frustrating". If they weren't frustrating, they wouldn't have been any good. They were really good at describing the seductiveness of being inarticulate, paralyzed and disengaged. MBV's sounds (esp. on Loveless)sometimes seem literally infantile - like seeing the world through newborn eyes. Words are not understood yet, everything is beautiful and mysterious but potentially dangerous. I don't think the 8/10 review damns the record, it just sensibly says "this is a powerful sound right now, which is worrying because there's all this scary shit going on in real life". This may be an uncool Dad-type thing to say, but it is really relevent to this particular record.

OK sorry replace 'listening' for 'writing about'.

Tom I don't agree with your position on this but have no great desire to get into a debate about it. Let's agree to differ.

My position is the fairly orthodox one that music can be great without containing anything that constitutes translatable meaning. But it can't be great without emotional power. To criticise music for not containing the first will, in most circumstances, be impertinent. To criticise it for not containing the second is valid.

I don't think a writer needs to define terms in the way you suggest. In practice they almost never do. They make assumptions about shared values. The writer's apparent mistake here is to assume that readers will share his belief that the conveying of information is an essential feature of good music.

(As an aside, I don't think he genuinely believes anything of the sort. This is the bad critic's common trick of affecting to believe something in order to have something to say. A moment's serious reflection would convince him of the wrongness of this idea. But then he would still have the space to fill, and probably not with anything better.)

Most people like at least some instrumental music (music without translatable meaning) but few people enjoy music that doesn't affect them emotionally.

I can easily imagine that a theoretical justification could be put forward in support of music that isn't emotionally affecting but I can't say it would interest me much.

I will agree to differ but will also clarify by saying that you can be emotionally affected in a shallow way - the frissons of fear or excitement you feel watching a horror movie or reading a thriller are hardly profound but are emotional sensations nevertheless. If you decided that music was an ideal carrier for these sensations but a poor carrier for more profound emotions it would obviously affect your value-system for judging it.

And my basic point is still that choosing to write and talk about music which you know is likely not to reflect your value-system is a bit of a mug's game.

There's a separate (and non argument-based) thread in this, actually

Rereading the thread I don't think we're disagreeing much - I'm not saying that the absence of an emotional response should be considered a critical good (though as you suggest it would be possible to work out a theoretical position for that), merely responding to your use of 'depth'.

Gareth: yeah you could refer to stockhausen but all he has to "say" is that he SERVES IMPERIALISM.

I agree the problem seems to be with "depth" but I think you were reading more into the term than I intended. It was not intended to have any connotation of "serious". I just think that if music's function is to communicate emotion then it should communicate an adequate amount of it.

But there is a secondary point about the quality or appropriateness of emotion, or about the techniques used. It's legitimate to object to the aural equivalent of the slow, gratuitous death of the little girls' puppy.

this is a simple question and deserves a simple answer....of course the artist actually trying to say something important adds value to the song. ANYONE who disagrees is spoiled too much by the Dylan/Beatles lyric revolution to the point of taking it for granted that lyrics are now optional (though not always NECESSARY for a good song). If you need an illustration, go and listen to some old 50's rock songs and notice how lame the lyrics are--"do wah diddy diddy dum diddy doo?!?!?!" The only meaningful lyrics were found in folk/country and thats what Bob D. brought to rock. Great technical musicians like Chick Corea or Yngwie M. (remember him...lol) will be long forgotten 200 years down the road while people will still know phrases like "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" or "when you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose". Any art form which introduces something nearly universal to culture is more valuable in the long run than anonymous bands like My Bloody Valentine, whether it be the "close-talker" or "face painter" of Seinfeld, or even the lame "who let the dogs out" crap, at least it got noticed. True, some are better than others, but when you are one of the few who actually has something to say, the lyrics of your song can be life changing. After all, since lyrics are pretty much accepted as part of a song these days, why not make 'em good.

(they have already won)

A Wop Bop A Loo Bop A Wop Bam Boom!

Shannanana Sha Boom Sha Boom!

Good God! Get on Up!

There is no such thing as a piece of music that has nothing to say. And even if there was it wouldn't be something as emotionally resonant as Loveless. It says more to me about the world, even specifics like the conditions of humanity that result in necklace killings in Soweto, than Bobby Gillespie ever could.

Yeah but surely implied in "something to say" is the idea of "something that can be said" i.e. verbalised. It's all very well saying 'Loveless tells me about the human condition that leads to Soweto' but if it's doing so in an abstract and non-verbal sense is it really "saying" anything in a useful sense (of the word, not useful to you). i.e. there is a difference perhaps between "it communicates something" and "it has something to say".

I was thinking about the Slayer and thrash band issue based songs, and it is true that they are trying to say something, but I feel the issues they deal with or more in tune with teen angst (war, environmental destruction, drugs etc) in general than ideology. So, I change my answer to one of not really being into bands/music with an overtly ideological stance. Not that there is anything wrong with this, just not my cup of tea.

Tom, I think actually "communicates" is more specific than "says"; think of the way we use "say" - for example, walking into your kid's room with your wife (hypothetically!) and seeing the half-empty cereal bowls, the filthy carpet, the unmade bed, then asking: "What does this say to you?" Of course you could nit-pick and say (haha), well it doesn't really "say anything" to her until she actually articulates what it says to her, but isn't this articulation a separate thing from the initial saying (being fully aware of the dubiousness of suggesting some sort of metaphysical reality associated with the act of saying)?

(mutter mutter well I guess if I was "fully aware" of the dubiousness then I wouldn't've even bothered to post that in the first place mutter mutter goddamn reflexivity)

Well the question she's asking is a specific demand for articulation isn't it?

so let's get back to the point. If you want to write a song about necklace killings, then just frickin' DO it. Tom is right when he says that the interpretation is specific to you cos their lyrics are on a purposefully vague, Spice Girl level if you ask me. When Dylan did "Masters of War" youda had to be really dumb to not get its meaning. Same with his love songs. I've heard it said that in literature there are only 6 or 7 basic themes, so originality in theme is unattainable....the trick is that the masters learn to express common ideas in a way that makes it unforgettable.

Which brings me to the Slayer guy....ever wonder if their lyrics are unintelligible for a reason?

But Phil: aren't you forgetting how all of that early nonsense-word rock'n'roll struck all of America as a truly profound shift, so much so that the bulk of polite society villified and suppressed quite a bit of it? Per the recent divide noted here, even when it wasn't "saying" anything it was certainly "communicating" something to most everyone who came across it -- something so important that it struck a lot of people as a fight for the very soul of the nation's youth. Isn't what popular music has to "say" usually completely about those sorts of nonsense gestures and the massive contextual significance they pick up around themselves?

I mean, I guess the trick is that it's less about "speech" and more about "resonance" -- less about telling you something "new" and more about providing encapsulations of things you're already attracted to or ready to respond to (even if you don't realize it yet).

Right, the distinction is between music saying something to you and music having something to say. It's the difference between meaning discovered and meaning imparted. Did Elvis plot revolution? Maybe part of him did.

As to the original question, yeah, I think "social commentary" can add to a band's greatness, and perhaps be the crux of it. The Clash would not be great had they written first-date songs, whereas a Tribe Called Quest would not be great if they hadn't.

and for that matter doesn't that make Tutti Frutti BETTER than Masters Of War because all MOW is really saying is something you and everyone else already DOES realize?

that was meant to follow nabisco's second point. doesn't matter because i misread it anyway. (preoccupied wondering how on earth "Who Let The Dogs Out" being catchier than MBV makes it "more valuable in the long run" and what if anything that has to do with the topic at hand)

all MOW is really saying is something you and everyone else already DOES realize?

Taking sides: "MOW" vs. Culture Club's "The War Song" (answer: er, can I pick something else?)

I once worked at a book store where one time we were playing MBV Loveless at a fairly low sound and a middle aged woman came up to us and begged us exhorted us to please take that record off! Viva la revolution!

It's nice to know that that album can have that effect on people.

"The best bands lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." -W. B. Yeats

musicians are so vain they always think they have some special message to impart - even if you really can't tell from the music

yes the nerve of those musicians < /special message >.

"I got something to say - I raped your baby today!" - Misfits