See me, hear me

 

I took some time yesterday to practice my "lying on the couch" skills. I put on some music to get me in the mood -- the particular streaming TV channel I found put the song lyrics up as the music played. I watched the lyrics go by, matching the music played and I realized just how stupid and poorly worded the lines often are. I also realized that the lyrics I apparently made up in my head years ago are actually better than what I found out the singer is actually singing.

The pedestal of "poetry" upon which I have consistently installed the musical verse as co-captain sets a standard, an expectation in my head of something that rises to the level of that ill-defined "poetic." The words are supposed to make some sense, even if that requires a poetic license when interpreting. But when Heart sings (in Barracuda, and I don't know which Wilson sister penned this) "you're gonna burn burn burn burn down to the wick" I must cry foul. Things don't burn TO the wick.

Some songs don't make any sense at all (semantically, syntactically, linguistically, contextually, conceptually, stylistically...) and in fact, if one were to separate the lyrics from the music and judge the words in that vacuum, the fact is that a lot of them are really, really bad.

I was under the impression that in certain cases, like in many songs by R.E.M., unintelligibility was the point, and if you could make out the words, there was no attempt to have them make sense. Good gag, fellows. Yay, Athens and all that. But when did Nirvana stop making sense? Sure, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder was using intentionally non-sensical lyrics for Yellow Ledbetter, the Beatles turned the vocals around in Rain, the "words" to the closing theme of WKRP are supposed to make no sense and the conversation in the midst of Everlong was studio-tweaked so as to be impossible to understand but the run of the mill lyrics, when the writer/performer is making no effort to mask them, should paint pictures, or tell stories or somehow express a strong emotion. They should do something poetic, that is communicative with an awareness of form, banking on a shared set of meanings and understandings with the audience. Heck, once we found out what the lyrics to Louie, Louie were we learned that they tell a clear story. It just seems that so many of them don't do that!

Now wait, you are no doubt saying -- aren't there equally insipid, illogical or otherwise offensive pieces of non-musical "poetry"? Why lay this at the feet of lyricists when generations of bad poetry have been written. Here's a reason. Yes, bad poetry exists but can you name it? (not some well regarded poem that you, personally, don't like, but a bad poem that everyone agrees is bad but everyone likes anyway)

In poetry, the word (most of the time) is intrinsically important so the poem's success, its rise and fall, depends on that word and very little else. Fame is achieved after the gatekeepers of word and culture pass judgement and call the poet by that title. It might be a fluke of timing, but that poem has to touch people in a way that gives it legs in the public eye. The musician has his music as a top priority and this redeems the existence and burden of poor language skills (Rick Springfield's "the question's probably moot" I'm looking at you, and no, "probably mute" is just as bad). The point is that the poetic inanities sink based on the poverty of their core purpose as a collection of words, therefore standing much less of a chance of achieving popular awareness and acceptance and much more chance of remaining mired in the murky depths of ignominy.  But a "great song" might be composed of a quality melody saddled with words of lead but it will still rise to the top and enter the public sphere and consciousness by virtue of its music. So bad poetry exists but we stand much less chance of hearing about it.

Therefore, Aerosmith can write nonsense as its lyrical approach and still produce a hit so hook-laden that a Dr. a Captain and Gordie Howe stargaze at it. I don't think Wooly Bully achieved fame on the back of its expressive turns of phrase. You let the music do the talking, I guess and the pseudo-poetry, the lacking lyrics that should be languishing in the refuse heap are there for us to suffer through on the shoulders of musical genius. But bad poetry ends up in the dustbin of history.

This presents the problem of how to approach those words. Are they still called poetry or can I find a way to dismiss them as something lesser so that I can remove that sense of obligation from them, and others can't throw them at me as examples of expression that, by name and genre, can be in the same sentence as the classics of our language and its expression in verse?

Don't know.