CymryLyrically Challenged
April 9th 2008 06:19
What is it about lyrics? Do they make or break a song, or do we need them at all? The topic of lyrics is something that, as both writer and listener, has always intrigued me. I am eternally facsinated with the way the written word (which becomes the spoken word through song) has the power to alter our values and perceptions; music is a poweful way for this to happen.
So what is it about a song that makes us want to sing along? When we hear a song we love, we are compelled to open our own mouths and warble along, whether in tune or totally tone deaf. Now the easiest answer to this would be genre, or artist – but in keeping with the theme of ‘musicality’ – of finding and exploring the musical soul, I want to look further than those aesthetic, easy answers we are all used to.
As with all opinions here, I can only express my own, and I’ll venture out: emotion. At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s the songs that hit us in the heart somehow that have the ability to hook in and hang on. If a song moves me, one way or another, then I want more of it. I want to listen to it and learn it and sing along with it, and a great deal of that power comes from the lyrics. Now by ‘heart song’ I don’t mean a love ballad! I mean simply any song that catches me, whether a situation I can relate to or the artist sounding so sincere that they convey the emotion across the vast reaches of ocean and airwave into my own empathetic being. It can be any emotion, any genre, any style. I’m as like to relate to Michael Buble as I am to Linkin Park, and it’s the heart quality to the lyrics that do it.
No matter the genre, no matter the artist, the radio station, the listener, the time or the place, lyrics have the ability to reach across to a listener and embed themselves within us; sometimes so deeply that we can’t escape them. In the shower, in the toilet, even asleep, there are songs out there that stalk us through the halls of our own minds until we succumb and listen to them, again and again, in search of some fulfillment.
So what is it about a song that makes us want to sing along? When we hear a song we love, we are compelled to open our own mouths and warble along, whether in tune or totally tone deaf. Now the easiest answer to this would be genre, or artist – but in keeping with the theme of ‘musicality’ – of finding and exploring the musical soul, I want to look further than those aesthetic, easy answers we are all used to.
As with all opinions here, I can only express my own, and I’ll venture out: emotion. At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s the songs that hit us in the heart somehow that have the ability to hook in and hang on. If a song moves me, one way or another, then I want more of it. I want to listen to it and learn it and sing along with it, and a great deal of that power comes from the lyrics. Now by ‘heart song’ I don’t mean a love ballad! I mean simply any song that catches me, whether a situation I can relate to or the artist sounding so sincere that they convey the emotion across the vast reaches of ocean and airwave into my own empathetic being. It can be any emotion, any genre, any style. I’m as like to relate to Michael Buble as I am to Linkin Park, and it’s the heart quality to the lyrics that do it.
No matter the genre, no matter the artist, the radio station, the listener, the time or the place, lyrics have the ability to reach across to a listener and embed themselves within us; sometimes so deeply that we can’t escape them. In the shower, in the toilet, even asleep, there are songs out there that stalk us through the halls of our own minds until we succumb and listen to them, again and again, in search of some fulfillment.
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