how would you rate good vocals in comparison to good lyrics?

I use *good* as the standard because there are too many anomalies associated with *bad* lyrics and vocals

good thread idea, gonna call this one slightly in favour of lyrics but only slightly (so, a 4)

it often boils down to the mechanics of the song, but nine times out of ten I would rather hear a voice I really like saying nonsense than a voice I despise saying something amazingly profound

and thinking like that is a good way to help you answer this question even if I said "good vocals" to "good lyrics"

I had to use that line of reasoning to do a tie-break over 8 and 9. I went with 9

^^^ The secret to REM's success

This said, I'm unusually tolerant of vocalists that many people really hate, so even though I adore good vocals, I probably should have voted 2 or 3 to reflect the fact that I've never had a problem with Billy Corgan or w/e

the only vocalist I can't listen to is the one from that horrible, horrible Icelandic band Mum

I guess it helps to pretend that you aren't listening to a person singing but a wood nymph or something

Vocalists are almost always my biggest hindrance towards finding new music. I must have 200+ vocalists I can't listen to. I don't know how uncommon this is

I only listen to bad performances of bad music with bad lyrics and vocals

although that faltered a bit once I realized Momus was such a dick

Voted 7, but may have a slightly skewed idea of "good" vocals. (I think Thom Yorke's vocals are perfect for Radiohead's music.)

I can't listen to 99% of indie rock w/a male singer. voted 9.

^ That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking, and I'd throw in most female indie singers too, and alt-country singers of both genders. On the other hand, lyrics are really important to me anyway. So I guess I'll vote 8.

Nah, just "more important" isn't strong enough. So I'll go with 9 instead.

I voted 9, but in terms of v. broad definition of "good"

xp (And come to think of it, I'll throw in "most extreme metal singers," too -- for different reasons than the indie guys, obviously, but they're still usually a deal-killer, no matter what their lyrics allegedly are.)

it often boils down to the mechanics of the song, but nine times out of ten I would rather hear a voice I really like saying nonsense than a voice I despise saying something amazingly profound

absolutely OTM. I'm on the board of trustees for the Bernard Sumner Academy of Lyric Writing and Singing

Ha, I generally agree, but I think Barney in particular has some clunkers so conspicuous that their badness transcends mere lyrics and melody (in a good way!).

If you count the vocal melody, or vocal flow, as part of 'good vocals' than it's a 8 or 9 for me.

there's some overlapping but I don't see why not

i don't care if someone is singing an opera about a volcano that spits out poison diarrhea if their voice is pleasant.

the only area where I pay close attention to lyrics is rap, but it's not impossible to put out a great rap album with mediocre lyrics.

"it's not impossible to put out a great rap album with mediocre lyrics."

this seems true, but i'm having a hard time thinking of an example

well, what's your favorite Kanye album?

^^^^^ thanks for taking that lead

also WAka Flocka

Yeah MBDTF totally counts imo. Unless it doesn't qualify as a rap album

every GangStarr album

bad example

no, it's really not, sorry

Guru's not one of my all-time favorite lyricists or anything but if Gang Starr springs to mind as the worst lyrics you've ever heard on a good rap record I mean maybe you need to broaden your horizons I guess?

also why on earth would MBDTF not count as a rap album?

0h thank you yes I shall go broaden my horizons ASAP!

category was great albums with mediocre rapping

10

was kinda kidding about broadening your horizons to listen to more rap with shitty lyrics fwiw

category was mediocre lyrics, not mediocre rapping. guru was a good lyricist, mediocre rapper (GURU RIP, fuck the grammys)

Beatnuts - Street Level
Cypress Hill's 1st 2
Lootpack - Soundpieces
Slum Village - Fantastic Vol 2
Diamond D - Stunts, Blunts and HipHop
Digable Planets - Blowout Comb
Epmd - 1st 3
INI - Center of Attention
Compton's Most Wanted - Music to Drive By

disagree w/ all of those that i've heard, but i am aware that ppl sometimes listen to rap music & just listen to the beats and kind of tolerate & bob around to lyrics so maybe if they seem underwhelming ppl just dismiss them? that diamond d album has great writing on it

the answer to this poll is 10 for anything besides rap tho, & feels p imperative

Two problems that I can see here. One, that "good vocals," for me (as with others, I'm sure), do not always mean pretty or virtuosic, but might mean just doing a good job with what you've got. For example, I like a lot of obscure '60s/'70s rock records put out on a local label by the band down the street where "good guitar playing" does not mean that they could play as good as Jeff Beck. Same holds true for the singing.

And then "good lyrics" can be many things and not just "saying something profound." So, I wonder with people who are voting for higher number responses here, don't the lyrics have to work for you? Isn't it, in fact, imperative, that they work for you in some way?

And thus are, in that sense, "good lyrics?"

so you're saying it's impossible to like a song and think the lyrics are anything other than good or better?

Good vocals are much more important--I'm at about 8.5, so I voted 9. Lyrics are important, as I wrote in the other poll. But there are ways around mediocre lyrics; a mediocre (or worse) vocal cannot be salvaged. (As I'm sure many people above have pointed out, what counts as "good vocals" is a whole separate issue.)

A mediocre vocal might not be able to be salvaged, but a mediocre VOICE can be in the same way that you say "there are ways around mediocre lyrics."

Kind of problematic because one element here is compositional, the other is performance.

9. A really good singer can totally sell silly lyrics (see Bowie), doesn't work for me with great lyrics and a grating voice (see Dylan)

Bowie couldn't sell "Time." Or the world.

A mediocre vocal might not be able to be salvaged, but a mediocre VOICE can be

I think we agree here. Bob Dylan and Neil Young (to use two obvious examples) don't have conventionally good voices (even though Dylan sings better than Caruso and hits all the high notes); they routinely laid down amazing vocals in their heyday, though. That's why I put the caveat about the subjectivity of what counts as good vocals.

"A really good singer can totally sell silly lyrics (see Bowie)"

But aren't you talking about a specific type of silly lyric writing? One that works for you? I'd assume you're not talking about "The Laughing Gnome."

(Sorry Alfred, I see that's what you were getting at.)

Birdman and Big Tymers are good examples of mediocre lyrics but enjoyable music.

haha i think ke$ha's lyrics are far far more palatable than her vocals

also-also, if you believe that listening to a song multiple times and 'internalizing' part of its structure are important preconditions for evaluating it fairly, then you have to consider the role of lyrics as signposts, helping to break up the musical whole into manageable chunks and facilitating this work of internalization. the way certain songs have choruses that you're ready to sing along with by the end of your first listen — is that achievement a good or bad or neutral thing in the overall scheme of your judgment?

lol maybe Ke$ha isn't the best example

I could be all lol-90s and bring up Sunscreem but I don't even know who would recognize them

Hi there!

I should have left "(except Ned and maybe jjjusten)" in my original post

haw i remember suncreem

(i mean i remember them existing, not their music)

*sunscreem

what is with my fkn typing this week

This was their big US hit; she doesn't have a DROP DEAD AMAZING voice but I like it, and the music, and both of those together help me swallow the overwrought lyrics (listening through to the end is a must, it's basically proto-Jewel)

Voting 8 or 9, probably 9. To me it's especially obvious in the case of standards/Great American Songbook material that is often ruined by cringeworthy hammy cabaret singing.

how much do you feel like something is missing when you listen to music w vocals in a language you don't know?

Oh man, Sunscreem! Thats quite a flashback.

Really, I cant definitively give an answer to a question like this cause a) Cocteau Twins, amirite but then again b) Throwing Muses.

2

Van Morrison's You Don't Pull No Punches from Veedon Fleece is a case in point. Lyrics are stream-of-consciousness mystical garbage. One of the greatest vocal performances he ever did...

it often boils down to the mechanics of the song, but nine times out of ten I would rather hear a voice I really like saying nonsense than a voice I despise saying something amazingly profound

this, except that I don't really like many "good" singers, so voted 1

i voted ten. if i hear a good lyric, that's just an added bonus. if a really bad lyric makes itself known but is performed well (happens a lot with nine inch nails), it hurts but doesn't ruin my overall impression of the song. with a lot of the metal i listen to, i don't know what the guys are saying at all, but i can't say that i care because it sounds good. same with musicians that i listen to who sing in other languages. i guess the best example of that would be sigur ros with their made up whateveritscalled language.

also a lot of the bands that i listen to, especially ones from the 90s, used scratch lyrics anyway (nirvana, early foo fighters, beck).

If neither are important to you, you're a fan of Girls (band).

8 or so. I want poetry, I read poetry. I've never really found anything in lyrics I've found particulary revolutionary in my life, tho do marvel at clever rhymes & such. But half of what I listen to rhymes "day" with "okay" and "say". I still enjoy it.

prolly only exception is anything written by morrissey. nobody understandds morrissey but me.

Gave a 7. Vocals are at least an important part of delivering the melody properly, i.e. more important than lyrics.

I voted 5 due to my difficult listening experience with Bob Dylan. I was on last.fm and Tracy Chapman poppped up singing one of his songs. I thought the lyrics are amazing, I didn't know Dylan was this good.

Then I see him on the Grammys and cringe. I know he has age and smoking against him at this point but it was unbearable. I need to want to listen to the lyrics if your voice is listenable enough.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

last day to vote

it often boils down to the mechanics of the song, but nine times out of ten I would rather hear a voice I really like saying nonsense than a voice I despise saying something amazingly profound

this, except that I don't really like many "good" singers, so voted 1

Isn't the entire point that "good" is subjective, ergo if the way a person sings is more important to you than what they are saying, you lean more towards the larger numbers?

for fucks sake the way Billy Corgan sings is one of the reasons I could never get into Smashing Pumpkins!

the way Malkmus sing is one of the reasons I can't get into Pavement.

I imagine that me and Malkmus couldn't be friends in the same way I imagine you (San Te) and Corgan couldn't be friends.

Basically ILM has more "friends of Malkmus" type people than "friends of Corgan" type people. I like to broaden categories of personality beyond Type A and Type B.

Next stop, I need to test ILM to see where they fall in the Hindu Trinity. I think this might help me better my understanding of ILM. AS WILL THIS POLL

DJP, I'm curious as to what bands/singers you like. Can you please throw out some examples? (and please don't try to hone in on bad singers - be random please)

I voted 5 since incredible vocals can salvage the worst lyrics for me and vice-versa. Tho good vocals doesn't always mean technically good vocals and can often mean interesting, strange or bizarre vocals

exactly

Here, off the top of my head, is a list of my all-time favorite bands/artists:

The Cure
Prince
Orbital
The Prodigy
The Knife
Bjork
Portishead
Underworld
Nine Inch Nails
Depeche Mode
Outkast
Massive Attack
New Order
Big Black
Tool/A Perfect Circle
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult
Nitzer Ebb
808 State
Erykah Badu
Meat Beat Manifesto
Steely Dan

also: Radiohead

Funny that I stumbled on this thread while listening to Every Picture Tells a Story, and Maggie May in particular. Clearly the answer to this is vocals. An amazing voice can imbue completely banal lyrics with emotional poignancy and great beauty. Can't you people see that?

I still feel like the banal lyrics are an essential part of the equation tho
which is why this is such a silly question

no it isn't. just because their existence is required for the singer to have something to sing is irrelevant, the thread is merely asking which do you favor more, and to what degree. simple.

also if you think they are equally important, your answer is "5"

TS: your favorite singers moaning wordlessly vs. your favorite songwriters writing poetry

which I mean, if people want to have that argument I guess it's okay, but it doesn't really feel like it has much to do with actually-existing music at that point

if that's what you're getting out of the poll you're missing the point

mostly I'm just being difficult

DJP
I realize now that I meant to reply to sic with "this, except that I don't really like many "good" singers, so voted 1" and basically reply with the same thing you said to him. Maybe sic listens to singers that he doesn't even think are subjectively "all that great"...

Before I realized my mistake I youtubed some of the bands you mentioned. The Knife's girl vocalist leads me to believe that not many people would would think she sounds good, even subjectively.

Big Black, Thrill Kill Kult and Nitzer Ebb vocals don't sound subjectively good to me but I can understand why they might be subjectively good to someone else.

The title of this thread doesn't specify what kind of "good" so maybe it's 50% of both kinds of "good" (or however anyone wants to interpret it)

(xp)
...but also I just have problems with the whole vocals/lyrics binary conceptual framework and the kind of (sometimes v.lazy) judgments rooted in it, and this thread seemed like a good place to rant

like, I think there are some lyrics that lend themselves to better or worse vocal performances — because, y'know, a certain sequence of vowels can sound good when a certain singer sings it in a certain way to a certain melody! and I think that good songwriters necessarily take into account the 'singability' of the words, whether consciously or not. and I'm not sure whether or not other people are including these things in their use of the phrase "good lyrics".

in closing, I urge everyone, before casting their vote, to imagine how much they would enjoy their favorite singer wrapping his or her pipes around a delightful sea shanty by pirate-prog rockers The Decemberists

I'm not sure that 'singability' should be taken into account because it's an overlap between lyrics and vocals. Then again, 'singability', in the way you defined it, is predominately lyrics

However it seems to me that lyrics encompass a lot less about at song than vocals. Maybe I would think differently if I was more into rap (or lyrics). So I might be biased or something

yeah, eg Shaun William Ryder is a p terrible singer, but I like his music and lyrics and the way he sings so

who's gonna graph the results?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

holy lol @ the results

this is a stunning triumph for indie

a stunning triumph for professional singers like yrself

a stunning triumph for the numbers 8 9 and 10

A good mid-place showing for 2, against the run of play.

confess, thoust whom voteth cero