What's important in a song to me

[Deleted]

I originally wrote this post in response to looking forward to hearing Dave's latest song and I thought it was enough off track that perhaps it deserves it's own thread and hopefully spur a little conversation about what's important in a song.

I don't like to criticize other people's lyrics because with songs I'm drawn to the music first, lyrics second. Sometimes it takes 10 or more listens before I really start to pay attention to just what the lyrics are about, if ever.

Case in point, the new Decemberists album. It's supposed to be lyrically a wonderful album, but I'm still getting my head around the music and haven't had time to digest the lyrics yet.

There are few exceptions though, such as Loudon Wainwright where the lyrics are so important to the song, I take in the lyrics at the same time as the music. Furthermore, lyrics will rarely ever compute into the final analysis of whether I like a song or not, unless the lyrics are so bad, they're a distraction. It's not that I don't understand the importance of lyrics, it's just that I don't put as much value on them as others.

So while I love to participate in the songwriting forum, and on occasion contribute my own lyrics, I don't feel I'm very equipped naturally to offer real criticism. I apologize for being one sided as often as I have in the songwriting forum(s). Sometimes I will read someone else's lyrics and think, that's clever or that's interesting and will say so, but I rarely will offer suggestions because I don't feel I'm good enough to do so.

So let's hear the songs, songs are meant to be heard and felt, not read.

[Cornflake]

You're right, songs are meant to be heard rather than read.

My group practiced tonight and we had a discussion that your post reminds me of. We played a staple song and I commented that I'm not wild about the song but it sure sounds good. A bandmate commented that my comment seemed to make no sense. We finally worked it out by acknowledging that I'm a lyrics guy and he's a music guy. I can put up with just about any music if the lyrics move me. He can put up with just about any lyrics if he likes the music. Such differences make life interesting. (Though why he's playing my stuff if he feels that way I can't imagine.)

Twenty years from now, a songwriting forum will be all MP3s or whatever their descendants are. We ain't there yet.

[Marshall]

I agree that music or sound drives a song. Music is sound. That's always the first hit or reaction. If you like the lyrics the first time, it's because you like the sound of the lyrics. And there's something to the mechanics of language that allow a lyric to reinforce the sound of a song. That's a very important part.

But also, lyrics give meaning and staying power to a song. If it's going to hold my attention for any length of time, there has to be also an intellectual connectin with the song. It's that pealing-back-layers-of-meaning and always finding something else to appreciate, that elevates song to it's highest level.

So, yes. Discussing lyrics by themselves is like discussing scalpals and passing judgement on brain surgery. . . . , but you can't crack a scull without a good clean knife.

[Deleted]

I sort of slightly don't disagree.

I think lyrics can be aesthetically described and discussed independently of the "accompanyment". It's not the whole description, of course, but just as the music, sans lyrics, can be examined in terms of form, harmony, melody, tempo, rhythm and dynamics - and the interplay between and interdependence of these - the lyrics can be described and criticised in terms of function, meaning, articulation, rhythm, and other literary devices. All this is at least true in art-song (as distinct from folksong).