@stuartk, +1 for the post and the rip!
How à propos! And everyone please excuse my very, very bad French, this Saturday... You can tell that young’un listened to a whole lot of Joni...
«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato
He know better than me. He is a musician and i am not. I dont listen contemporary lyrics anyway, they are not all bad for sure, but what is good enough is few waves in an ocean of bad to worst...
I will never dare to claim it because i am old, not a musician anyway, i listen classical old music and world music and Jazz...
And old very old lyrics from Franco-Flemish school to Léo Ferré and to the genius Bob Dylan Dylan...
Just write what you think about Beato informed opinion...
I like him because he spoke bluntly and is enthusiast musician ...
171 responses Add your response
How much effort have you put into exploring contemporary songwriters? I haven't read through the entire thread and I'm not singling you out here, but I am going to point out an elephant in the room. None of us are wholly immune to favoring what we like -- what is familiar -- and regarding it as "best". I've noted this tendency in myself over and over.
An example of a superb contemporary lyricist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbyc4vSimlo&list=OLAK5uy_nupQhyPmczHDy01DZww9h857BXmNekeNU&index=2
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Any 20 year old will be happy to make the case that today's young songwriters are putting out music with lyrics not only comparable to but better, more resonant, and far more relevant than those songs.
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@ jssmith It's easy to cherry pick a few lyrics from any era that are unsophisticated and even silly. But I don't think this discussion is about the worst of any era, it's about the best. And, in my opinion at least, the best of the 60s, 70s, and even the 80s is far better lyrically than what we have now. These were some of the most acclaimed albums from just the 60s: Revolver, The White Album, Pet Sounds, Blonde on Blonde, Beggar's Banquet, Astral Weeks, Music from Big Pink, Tommy, Court of the Crimson King, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, We're Only In It for the Money, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme That's just a small sample, and each of those albums include at least two or three truly great songs. Can anyone reasonably argue that today's young songwriters are putting out music with lyrics comparable to those songs? I doubt it. |
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It is not about how kids wrote their music bad or good. It is about the social fabric transforming us into consumers of trash... I am not nostalgic... I listened only Bach when most listened Pop music in the golden age...
We are not in the obligation to accept mediocrity to be cool and to be able to go with the crowd...
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@noromance Agreed. "Yummy, yummy, yummy I got love in my tummy" -- Ohio Express, 1968 "Louie Louie, oh no no no, take me to where ya gotta go, oh no" -- The Kingsmen, 1963 Pop lyrics have always been terrible, although they may be more consistently bad today. |
Yeah, your right about the plain Amish bread. I grew up around the Indiana/Ohio state Amish community. Good stuff and good people. You see, you get what you put out...And I don’t agree that being enthusiastic equates to being pathetic. Pathetic is a harsh word and carries a very negative vibration with it. And with all due respect, who is he to judge. |
A negative motivated in a clear proposition can induce intelligent discussion... I think all responses were polite and interesting even those beside the thread question... Beato is not a negative person but an enthusiast... I like his posts because of his honesty, right or wrong, he is humorous and plain as Amish bread... |
Maybe, you’re on to something? But I will tell you this, if you lead with a negative (negativity).
Don’t be surprised when you get a negative (negativity) thrown right back at you. It doesn’t matter who you are. It could me, Rick Beato or even our good friend @mahgister. Karma, the Universe or whatever you want to call it/her, has a way of bounding back at you. It’s a simple universal truth. It has nothing to do with culture, education, taste, lyrics, music or even the internet. It just is... A simple universal truth. Period, full stop. There's no need to philosophize. Now again, maybe/if when we/you lead with (positivity) something positive like this. Rick Beato - The Album That Changed My Life We all can/could have more (positivity) positive responses to the subject at hand and to each other. |
My # 1 criteria for good lyrics is: "Does it impress me on any and/or multiple levels?" I forgot to mention Billy Bragg in my initial post. I submit the following examples, which all come from the same song ("Accident Waiting To Happen"): Goodbye and good luck to all the rubbish that you've spoken - Goodbye and good luck to all the promises you've broken - Your life has lost its dignity, its beauty and its passion - You're an accident waiting to happen. One of these nights you're gonna get caught - It'll give you pregnant pause for thought - You're a dedicated swallower of fascism (KINKS reference) Time up and time out for all the liberties you've taken - Time up and time out for all the friends that you've forsaken - If you choose to waste away like death is back in fashion - You're an accident waiting to happen. And my sins are so unoriginal - I have all the self-loathing of a wolf in sheep's clothing - In this carnival of carnivores, Heaven help me.
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@devinplombier +1 on your post. The idea of culture morphing into entertainment and, truthfully, everything being an iteration of Gaming. It's like Taylor Swift timing her album releases to keep other artists off the charts. Everything seems to be a cult of personality race. |
Throughout history, all art forms (acting - music - painting - writing) and sports go through periods of drought when it comes to someone achieving true and/or transcendent greatness. In those unfortunate times, what tends to happen is that the "very good" will probably get elevated to greatness by default. Which makes for lively debate; and, this thread has certainly achieved that! So, kudos to all that have participated. |
@mitchagain I agree with a lot of your examples and would add more like Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell just in the 70s (poet/singers) and say the Raincoats for the late 70s and early 80s and Gang of Four in the 70s. I could go on and on. In the 21st Century, I can think of Sufjan Stevens, Molly Rankin, Aimee Mann, James Mercer, Alex G., Angel Olsen, Adrienne Lenker, Madison Cunningham, Kristin Hersh, Trish Keenan (RIP), MIYNT, Courtney Barnett (a real wordsmith), Robert Smith is still at it, Sleater-Kinney and Sadie Dupuis just off the top of my head. I don't listen to rap very much but I don't discount the fact that some rap artists are really writing good stuff. There is still probably about the same disproportional amount of bad lyrics to good lyrics. All you have to do is to look at the lists of the top 40 or so songs from each year and most of it is crap. You have to dig deeper to find the gems and there are many more women leading bands, writing songs and playing leads who are writing interesting stuff. |
Thanks a lot for this great post!
Right! And each zeitgeist reveal and take with it new sensibilities and new realities, then we cannot fault the zeitgeist nor the people born with it... but we can observe his effects on us...
Thats the problem Beato spoke about without being clear as you are in this post because he only observed one effect , the poverty of the lyrics....
Now thanks to your post we see more clearly the problem in our social fabric : the desintegration of the social fabric imposed by many new factors but also the new technology (the internet) . The poverty of lyrics came with this disintegration of the social fabric and his manufacture by the corporations... music is only a canary in the mines... A.I. will do way worse... I am not a luddite by the way... Thanks to internet i read all books and science articles i want, which i could never dreamed about young because i did not have enough money...( i had bought 2,500 books at age 29 and i compute that the price was a big deposit on a big house i "lost" in useless studies for some ) Same for the music... I like my computer...I am not luddite.. But this does not means that the internet is not a problem : we must recreate the social fabric in a conscious way from the bottom up. If not A.I. will finish the destruction of the social threefold fabric : culture/ free education-political participation-economical integration, A.I. will flatten this three dimension of man conscious activities to one dimension of total control under big corporations ( it is already the case in many fields as medecine, agriculture etc no more freedom ).
Going back to music and lyrics. Culture is not about taste but about education. When education is no more free in all sense of the word free, artistic work lost all meanings, and any product is there to satisfy an animal pleasure instinct, thats all ...
Crocodiles had taste. We must know why we love something and why we dont love something else . We must think, we are not crocodiles exhanging about the way to taste cadavers in the river bed or listen to this or that and it must be good then .... And perhaps if we think we will know how and when and why lyrics are bad or not ... Bob Dylan "taste" more Gerard Manly Hopkins than Marvel comics, i bet this is not a question of "taste" precisely.
«For sure i am elitist in the crowd»-- Groucho Marx |
Fair enough, allow me to take a stab or two 1. As has been pointed out previously, the zeitgest has moved on (can we say reversed itself). The 60s / 70s were a time of youth, newness, daring and creativity. You were not to trust anyone over 30. Heck, you were not to be over 30. In the present era risk management reigns supreme, and what's safer than proven sellers?.Hence New Beetle, New Mustang, 80-year-old rockers selling out arenas all decked out in ADA ramps, the Marvel Universe, Mission Impossible 12, McIntosh amps, whatever. This arc moves in unison with the XXL-sized boomer demographic passing through the boa constrictor of time. 2. What was once culture is now known as entertainment, and Internet has made possible its present, extreme granularity. This is rather a good thing in some ways: without Internet, many of us would have never known many of our favorite musical artists, and with the Internet there is no way that talentless British bands could ever turn the wholesale appropriation of Black folks' music into billion-dollar careers. If the Rolling Stones came up today, they would hustle to book gigs in half-empty taverns. The downside is that a shared culture and a common language have been lost. Whether you loved the Stones or laughed at them, you knew them. Were you a rocker or a mod? Stones or Beatles? It's probably safe to say there is no equivalent today. Not that we ran out of reasons to fight each other, but that's a different conversation. That beato character appears to be a bit controversial. Perhaps some folks reacted to him rather than to the questions you posed, which are very good questions indeed. |
I'm sorry to laugh, but that was funny!
Yep, once I went back and googled Recently and Photographs And Memories it all made sense. Thank you |
This is off the album ’The 18TH Letter’ from the Rap Artist - RAKIM with the rap/song ’Guess Who’s Back’ 1997 The beats/sample music is from the album ’Hands Down’ from the artist Bob James from the song ’Shaboozie’ This is an analog audio only version. Guess Who’s Back This is a video off the album ’The 18TH Letter’ from the Rap Artist - RAKIM with the rap/song ’Guess Who’s Back’ 1997 The beats/sample music is from the album ’Hands Down’ from the artist Bob James from the song ’Shaboozie’ This is a live version recorded at The Blue Note in NYC 02/09/23 Rakim - Guess Who’s Back with Talib Kweli, Black Thought & Bob James at The Blue Note NYC 2-9-23 I wanted to show the live version so you can see these young men paying homage to one of the most melodic composers I’ve had the pleasure of listening to over these years and also them paying homage to back in the days when poetry was recited in the New York clubs over a cup of coffee with yes, sometimes a band. This is a video off the album ’DAMN’ from the Rap Artist - Kendrick Lamar with the rap/song ’LOVE’ featuring Zacari 2017 The beats/sample music were made in the studio by in house studio producers. This is Kendrick Lamar’s attempt at making a love song. A very melodic love song if you will. This video is of its time and is very visually descriptive and forward but offers no disrespect to women. Kendrick Lamar - LOVE featuring Zacari |
I discovered "blues" and "Gospel" in some mix of genius by Blind reverend Gary Davis, very long time ago... I was not a fan of blues at the time nor of jazz... I was flabbergasted not only by his voice and guitar playing but by his text and lyrics inspired from bible and prayers... Truly moving ... Then words matter... I can listen to him with the same amazement today : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W9PuLcoZMM Now recommend me an artist with the same authenticity today . They exist for sure but not on the top chart of music sorry and not in so great numbers than 70 years ago in the US but there is many around earth ... What we lost in North America play chart is compensated by our access to world music in all genre ... We have geniuses today as i said but the industry of music here has killed many artists...
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People argue about "taste"... This question is not about taste if it was we can surmiss that some will defend the idea that marvel comic book beat Shakespeare and Beckett ...( i prefered marvel comic when i was under 10 ) The Beato cry was about the decreasing lyrical poetics content quality in popular chart... Not about genres, not about tastes, not about nostalgia... But it ask too much for people to think about why this phenomenon even exist instead they felt their taste is attacked and they argue about their innate right to their taste written in some chart ... It is not a philosophical forum for sure but an audio one... Then i am faulty... I apologize asking people to think ....
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@vitussl101 oddly enough, the main market for that street thug music that you so generally described are suburban white teenagers. |
Actually, @tyray , at the time your post made me think of those lyrics (". . . memories can be friends . . .") I could not remember the name of the song. I did a google prior to that post, and the song title was Recently, and I just did another google, and that was released on the I Got A Name album. Which, as an aside, may have been the first cassette tape I ever bought, when I was a teenager, for my "stereo, which was a little portable cassette player. However, I also thought that Photographs And Memories was a pretty good song. |
You can say that there is a bit to unpack here, but to me, all that street thug bravado comes from very limited life experiences; poor education, little or no family structure, access to a world just outside there own of violence where gang life becomes family life. All of this regurgitated through some producer who finds a profit to be made, selling a product to the same audience. Something like that. And yet there are people, artists who break through this wall, this uphill battle and produce profound art. Lennon on the other hand while not having an idyllic childhood, WWII, had a loving mother who did impress music, culture that extended outside just there world. He had access to some education and from this somehow, with a bit of luck timing, helped alter the music culture of a generation. "Across the universe" comes at the end of the Beatles life, written after a juggernaut of experiences few ever will know.
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The impoverishment of vocabulary and the separation of music in narrow niches is a way to control the masses and are not random events... Corporations pilot education as well as music industry as a manufactured product...
This is implied by Beato observation and not spell clearly... I am not nostalgic by the way i discovered new genius in music each month. But they are not in the popular hit parade ... When i was young anyway i did not listen really much to any popular music, be it Beatles and all groups music, i was in classical music and poetry. If i feel nostalgic of my young years i will listen, Bach , Josquin des prez, Gabrieli, Vivaldi, Léo Ferré a poet, and Ravi Shankar and Moondog and Bob Dylan or Blind Gary Davis with magnificent text lyrics... I did not had any albums of pop or rock .... Then count me out for nostalgic listening of pop music by old age ... I discovered Jazz recently 30 years ago... i was handicapped in my music exploration young because of my exclusive love of music before Mozert,... I discovered Bruckner and Scriabin recently 30 years ago.... Poetry and text in lyrics matter as much to me than music... It is why i like Kurt Weill so much.... |
Rick is pointing out the obvious.Young people in general have a usable vocabulary of a shockingly minute size nowadays.Its not cool or hip to use an uncommon verb or adjective when a ten cent word will do.Just listen to the personas on radio who dont just dumb down vocabulary but ARE dumb and are unable to go into their word bag.Don't get me started. |
Times change. The poetic zeitgeist of the 60s is gone. The social, racial, and political lyrics zeitgeist of the 80s and 90s is pretty much gone. To @mahgister s point of their not being a "collective positive movement" - well, he’s right. We have become a niche culture in music and just about everything else. And there are few artists that can speak to many different niches. And unfortunately, this thread also exposes the tendency of the older generation to dismiss and be wary of Music they didn’t grow up with. |
It seems some people dont get the point... 1----There is plenty of great lyrics today because the number of talented people in all genre is roughly the same % 2----But there is not a collective positive movement created by the lyrics as it was a case few generations ago... ( negativity is easy to create by sheer provocation but it is not art) 3---- And if we compare the poetic content and value of what is heard and favored on many medias the levels of quality is lower ... Thats Beato point as i understood it ..
My own takes about this : The corporations power over the artist deveopment and content are more heavy nowadays and it result in a mechanization of the minds and of the products... Jonie Mitchell and Madonna are not the same on artistry level... Sorry ... But the 2 are very talented.... One is an artist on a musical and poetical way , the others is more an influencer and a provocative asset... She sell herself as a product...Many "artist" nowadays sell themselves as a product name...
Now the poetic value of a lyrics is a litterary quality not a question about taste or nostalgia ...It is not related to the singer talent either, some vocalist could move crowd reciting the telephone book ...
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@devinplombier Yeah, found Bohren on Bandcamp. You might also like Throwing Snow, rather electronica, but no words either. His other project Snow Ghosts (synthy neofolk?) is also great, IMHO, but that has folk-leaning female vocals. |
Re: "Good Morning, Little School Girl" While the Grateful Dead was one of many groups and artists who performed and/or recorded it, the song and lyrics are generally credited to Sonny Boy Williamson. Like most blues songs, however, Sonny probably borrowed and adapted it from someone else who borrowed it from another someone else and so on and so forth. |
