Let's dance about architecture

August 5, 2008 9:56 AM

Or to put it another way, do you care about lyrics? I know this is a subjective question, but Mefites are an articulate bunch with what I'm sure are big ears for music. It seems to me that "formal" music criticism -- a la Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, etc. -- devotes a disproportionate amount of words to, er, words. I find myself a lot more forgiving, if the music's any good. How about you?

I enjoy poking fun at songs with terrible lyrics as much as anyone, but how much does your enjoyment of a song really hinge on "what it means"?

Critics seem especially prone to drawing conclusions about a song or album based on a literary analysis of it, but do you? Or is the broad and subjective swirl of factors that go into such a subjective experience just too difficult to write about?

I know there is no one right answer, but I am curious if my way of listening to music -- where the sum total of its qualities get whirled into some magical judgment blender -- is so much different from anyone else's. (As a writer by profession, I'm all for the power of the word...I just think that songs are not books, or even poems.)

posted by thebordella to Media & Arts (1 answer total)

Your approach to music isn't unfamiliar to me. I barely even notice the lyrics of many songs I listen to; there are favorites from decades ago and I still have no clue what those people are saying. I'll add, though, that at least in my case the experience is not at all universal. The first thing my wife notices about music is the lyrics; play her a song and if she likes it she can sing along the second time around. I myself wouldn't have the faintest idea what those people are saying ten or twenty plays later. The voice is an instrument to me, and the lyrics are merely one (exceedingly minor) aspect of how that instrument is played.

It's worth noting, though, that I'm also possibly among the world's worst digesters of audial information. I can barely listen to talking on the radio because it's so much slower than reading that I don't process what's being said. Those audiobooks that are so popular with the kits these days? Sound like an irritating, monotonous drone noise to me.

The subject of a song can be a fun aspect of the thing but I, like you, find literary criticism of it silly. It's like paying attention to the goofy drummer zombie face, the headphone nod, or the silly guitar stances: that is to say, missing the point.
posted by majick at 10:11 AM on August 5, 2008