Records You Think Are Profound

When I was a "yoof" I thought the Smiths could do no wrong and would sit for hours in my bedroom with "Asleep" on replay, trying to work out if Moz was either contemplating suicide or turing in early for the evening.

Of course, when I discovered "the pot" everything I listened to, from The Monkees "Another Pleasant Valley Sunday" to Michael Nyman's "Drowning By Numbers" soundtrack was deeply, deeply profound.

Eventually though, I discovered the trying to find something profound in music is a wild goose chase. Deeper meaning comes from the people you choose to surround yourself with, life experiences both good and bad etc.

Music, in my opinion, props up the way we feel at a given moment, an aural stimulant that either heightens or lower emotions created out there in the so-called "real world", away from the turntable or cdplayer.

my glib answer, which i'm afraid isn't glib at all, is that only the trite is profound, and only the profound is trite. if you see what i mean?

No I don't think it implies lyrical content though obviously some people will be looking for profundity within lyrical content. A depth of personal feeling - as with Ned above - would be an appropriate way to approach the thread.

Don't you think that if anyone (and I'm not saying it's me, mind you) were to be stupid enough to admit something like that that he'd just get laughed at and scorned with all kinds of snide comments? What kind of moron would ever open him- or herself to that kind of vulnerability?

Come on. No one's gonna fall for something like that.

I'm not doubting that the moments you guys described above may have changed your lives - they were profound to you, no question. But aren't the associations you're drawing a little bit like someone who says, "I realized I was in love with my wife-to-be during a thunderstorm. Thunderstorms are so profound."

What I mean is - the moment during the thunderstorm may have been "profound" to that person and thunderstorms now carry a special personal meaning to that person, but that does not make them profound to me.

btw I am not in any way mocking Ned or Matt C.'s answers or doubting their sincerity... my point is more about semantics I guess.

I'm going to look up "profound".

this means though that I don't think listing them is any more or less interesting than listing what I normally listen to, aside from the list having 'profound' at the header instead of 'what I like this month'.

For me at least: Loveless is the record that truly meant something to me. Not in the superficial way, but in a personal way. It was music that was so intangible yet somehow seemed to express everything I was feeling. Without specifically addressing anything in the way say, Joy Division expressed specific thoughts & emotions, but in a cerebral and heady mix of pure emotion.

Can’s Tago Mago was pretty profound too, but for different reasons.

Somehow profound seems to imply meaning but something meaningful is not yet profound. Concerning music the most obvious thing which could be meaningful are the lyrics. Concise lyrics which describe universal truths or situations could be profound. Like maybe the lyrics of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Joni Mitchell. The lyrics of New Order would mostly not qualify to be profound in this sense and probably neither in the other sense mentioned in the next paragraph. But their music could well be profound.

On the other hand profundity seems to suggest something difficult to grasp, a meaning which we don't get immediately but which we think is hidden behind. Something almost mystic, rather unclear. This connotation of profound can be applied both to the lyrics and the music itself.

The first band which came to my mind when I read the word profound in your post, Tom, was already mentioned before: Joy Division. Their dark, powerful music seems to hide a secret. The same is true for their lugubrious lyrics. Of course Ian Curtis suicide adds to this.
Another band which I occasionally find profound are Godspeed YBE!. Their last double album Lift Up Your Skinny... as most their music had this apocalyptic, foreboding feel both in the music and in the few spoken word samples.

Profound and shallow are often not very far apart. The Flaming Lips have been mentioned upthread. When reading what Wayne Coyne wrote about his last two albums on his (or the record company's site, I don't remember) it gave me the impression that his music and lyrics (or the story they tell) are very well thought out. On the other hand when I recently listened to The Soft Bulletin I had the impression that this is really the most bland and empty record on earth. Grateful Dead, Yes and other progrock bands also walk on the edge of both extremes. It seems profound in the beginning but then it is just noodling, bombast and kitsch.

People have said before that their relation to certain music is profound and they hesitated to call the music itself profound. That shows that this term is problematic when used outside our direct experience.

I'd prefer to use the terms complicated or difficult instead of profound as they are more easily measurable and less subjective.

I really hope I got the italics right!

The problem is to what do you assign this term:
The intellect? Emotions? Technical prowess?

Is it something you find in the music itself or is it something that arises from our shared (or your personal) experience of the music/lyrics?

The function of some music is in itself profound, even if its execution is not universally respected or understood...for example John Coltrane's quest for nothing less than Truth and the Mind of God during his hour-long trance-like "apocolyptic" solos.

Must music reach the edge of human expression (perhaps transcending these limits) to be profound? Or would something which embodies a certain human experience with great purity in a way that anyone can understand be profound as well? One could argue that Hank Williams had a profound understanding and ability to express the contents of a broken heart.

Seems like one of those questions that can only breed more questions...

I think "Dilemma" is profound but not "Hot in Herre". "Lookout Weekend" by Debbie Deb but not "Family Affair" by Mary J. Blige. Dig?

I think profudnity is more than a vague mysterious quality - I think it actually means there is wisdom in there: ie, either in the sound or in the lyrics, someone has got hold of a truth that is both vitally importnat, and very hard to get hold of, and the listener can join them there and get hold of it too.

Shit, and to think I used to hate hippies like me.

Such things are more often laid bare over an album's worth, or even several album's worth of music. Burning Spear is for me the profoundest artist: I can burrow further and further into the music, finding deeper and deeper meaning in the words and the way they are sung, in much the way religious people meditate on a text and have profound insights. If I had to pick one song it would be 'Children' or 'Red, Gold and GFreen'

Joy Division, too - and here I think it's possible to pick out some tracks that really do SAY something as well as just evoking it. 'Insight' is profound. 'Heart and Soul' is profound.

Paddy McAloon can do it too - often in a couple of couplets, the bastard. Throwaway profundity stinks.

Pop music can be at its most astonishing when this quality is ahcieved in a single song. For my money, 'Surf's Up' manages it in spite of the verbiage; so does '(White Man) in the Hammertmith Palais', in spite of - or even becuasue of - the political posturing.

I could go on a long time about eahc of these songs (and many others), quoting lyrics and bits of music, but I might get some loud e-crys to 'shut up!'

Most profound: right now it's a revisitation to Zimmerframe's Blood on the Tapes (gimme the acoustic versions of these jewels over the electric anytime).

(of course i am attracted to the "non-verbal" because i hate it: it is my prey and i SHALL skin it)

No Mark: with each layer of the peeling onion your are fascinated = you are Postmodern. There is no escape, even if you pickle it, or yourself.

haha "pickling" isn't a bad concept to introduce tho, as "profundity" to me is merely a kind of passive-aggressive embalming (it SAYS "this work is too too marvelous for words and thus beyond undersdanding" but it MEANS "i alone am deep enough to graps how deep my hero is, and my failure to articulate that stands as proof: you with your big words are a minnow in a tank of great white whales")

Some people say Hegel, Heidegger and Adorno were profound. I don't know as I never understood them. Shouldn't profundity be clarity?

I too associate clarity w.lack of depth, but I am unconvinced that lack of depth is (automatically) a good thing. I am a Gemini.

Edmund Burke? Don't know him, an obscure British historian from the 19th century? In any case he didn't like and get maths, then. The realm of clarity and beauty. That quotation is really utter bollocks. I have another one but have to look it up at home.

Love Will Tear Us Apart? Why? That's the only JD song I hate. And the title seems to be right out of a bad kitsch movie. Really bad taste in hindsight. Proves again that the extremes overlap.

The most useful piece of information on this thread.

La Monte Young is more profound than Steve Reich but Tehillim is more profound than "Two Sounds". Julian Bream is more profound than Eliot Fisk. Moving Pictures is more profound than 2112 (is more profound than In the Court Of the Crimson King). Boston was more profound than Joy Division. The Beatles were more profound than the Velvet Underground. Jimi Hendrix was more profound than Led Zeppelin. "Out On the Tiles" and "Dancing Days" are more profound than "Stairway To Heaven". Both "Wish Fulfilment" and the Bad Moon Rising suite are more profound than "The Diamond Sea". "I Know It's Over" is more profound than "How Soon Is Now?". Concrete Blonde's "Joey" is as or more profound than any pop song I can think of at the moment. Andrew WK is more profound than Radiohead is more profound than System Of a Down. Writing a vicious letter with or without sending it is more profound than going for a jog is more profound than punching a wall is more profound than crying is more profound than getting trashed. Acing your exams is more profound than just about anything.

For real? The first part might be near to the mark but the second part... that's far too easy.

Tief sein und tief scheinen. - Wer sich tief weiß,
bemüht sich um Klarheit; wer der Menge tief scheinen
möchte, bemüht sich um Dunkelheit. Denn die Menge
hält alles für tief, dessen Grund sie nicht sehen kann:
sie ist so furchtsam und geht so ungern ins Wasser.
[Nietzsche: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, S. 240. Digitale Bibliothek Band 2: Philosophie, S. 67482 (vgl. Nietzsche-W Bd. 2, S. 144)]

and in my crap translation:
Being and seeming profound. - Who knows himself deep, strives for clarity; who wants to make the crowd think he is deep, strives for obscurity. As the crowd thinks everything deep, of which it can't see the bottom; it is so fearful and doesn't like to go into the water.

Another good short French quotation by Vauvenargues which sounds like a compromise:
La clarté orne les pensées profondes (translate yourself)

but "striving for clarity" doesn't just mean juggling with prefabricated journalistic slogans either (i'm not accusing you of this at all, alex, but in a awful lotta writing, accessibility just means it's been translated into some pre-digested formula you already knew you knew)

That said, of course there's music that makes the bottom drop out of my heart, that takes me past my limited sense of self. (Though often that just means I need a sandwich). Usually it's smaller pop moments, rather than attempts at grandeur, that trigger this response. The Shakira song where she says the dude gives her a reason to shave her legs every morning makes me cry. So does Blink 182's "First Date"--songs about insecure boys always floor me. Call it the profundity of the everyday.

Of course, then there's soul, which I'll leave someone else to root around in.

I'll second Matos on "He Stopped Loving Her Today." And "Love Will Tear Us Apart" why the hell not. Here are two guys smack up against something so much bigger than themselves they can only gasp in awe/terror/confusion. That seems like a good place to look for profundity.

Both court schlockiness too. Is that a neccessary prerequisite for pop profundity?

Anyway then death, and I think the way it's executed, musically as much as lyrically or conceptually, is possibly the most "profound" thing I own. "Dying" and "Sacrificial Bonfire" at the end. Just massively perfect, massively affecting. I mean, this is a look ahead at death -- a band finishing their concept with the part we can't know about -- and instead of some overblown This is Death thing it's just (1) an anxious, frightened song about cancer, tea cosies, and shrivelled-up noses, and (2) a peaceful post-death eulogy in XTC's pastoral English-harvest mode, a crematory burial, a fond farewell. I can't say enough about it.

Yes. I think any sense of the profound in music has to be the product of a movement from one point to another, whether within the song or within the context surrounding the song (ie. the profound song might be unified, but it can only then be profound if its unity is part of a broader disunity. "Profound" = realisation, epiphany, acquiesance, unveiling. Thus there is always a sense of uncertainty to the song (inherent or contextual) because it is an arrival.

This is maybe why I often find final album tracks are fourth singles to be profound (from DJ Shadow's "You Can't Go Home Again" to Britney's "Born To Make You Happy"). It's also why The Avalanches strike me as profound - their "take a little journey" approach to their album was more explicit than on most mix albums, seeking to narrate a story of conflicting emotions arriving at unity.

Depending on how you look at it, pop is often ill-suited to this sort of profundity because a good pop song frequently strives to evoke a sort of journeylessness - the "out of time" aspect of the endless party - although the truth is that the move towards journeyless can itself seem profound. I haven't quite worked out why or how though (help plz!). Nonetheless it's easier to spot profundity in a pop star whose career offers a sort of narrative (would Madonna's "Oh Father" or "Substitute For Love" ever have struck critics as being profound if it came from a new artist?).

So revive.

Go listen to it. Now.