I have a rule when listening to song lyrics: if I can predict the second line after hearing the first – it’s shit.
Harsh? Perhaps. But it just makes the artist lazy in my eyes. Why would I want to listen to something I could have written myself? Lyrics should challenge, inspire, surprise; not sound like an angry ten-year-old’s diary. Common lyrical pitfalls I cringe at include the following:
- Rhyming – unless you’re Eminem, this isn’t really expected. Why limit your lyrical potential with assonance? Rather than writing freely, budding artists are sitting with their head in their hands, overflowing ashtray beside them, asking their flatmates what rhymes with “hungry.” (Unless you’re Avril Lavigne, and then you can just use the same word twice – “He was a skater boy, she said see you later boy.” FTW?) I’ve been caught in the most inane conversations while co-writing with people who simply can’t conceive that their song doesn’t need to follow the same syntaxic rules as the Play School theme. Let it go, douchebags!
- Clichés – these actually piss me off even more than rhyming. Probably because they’re often used in conjunction. I’m missing you, you know it’s true… I need you girl, you rock my world… Treat me right, all night… You broke my heart, now we’re apart… I may be pretty, but my lyrics are shitty… etc… I can’t expect much more from Usher or Ashlee Simpson, but it breaks my heart (oops, cliché right there) when a great artist sullies their music by staining it with god-awful lyrics. Alanis Morissette, Motor Ace, Filter, Sheryl Crow (yeah, I dig her), Pacifier, Dashboard Confessional, Pearl Jam and Korn – you have all let me down with your shitty lyrics. Shame.
- Bad similes – cracked.com has a whole article on this, where they expose the Top 12 Most Ridiculous Similes in Music History. My favourite is Nelly Furtado’s, “I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away/ I don’t know where my soul is, I don’t know where my home is.” As the author points out, birds are actually quite renowned for their ability to locate where they have come from – think homing pigeons. Perhaps something like, “I am like Matt Damon in the Bourne Identity”, would have been more fitting.
- Bad metaphors – similar to the sucky simile, bad metaphors are burnt cake. Pink comes to mind, and her dubious claim that “God is a deejay”. Personal religious beliefs aside, I’m pretty sure God is yet to be seen turning tables next to a smoke machine while eight-year-olds do the nutbush. I guess “God is a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions” just doesn’t have the same ring??
- Idiotic rhetoric – “Oh where oh where can my baby be?” – She’s dead, Eddie. There was a car accident and she died. Grieve and move on.
Enough bitching. One of the reasons I love silverchair so much (and will probably reference them in every TMB post) is that throughout their albums, you can trace the development and improvement in almost every aspect of the band’s musicality. The strongest of these is perhaps Johns’ lyrical development – over the four years between frogstomp and Neon Ballroom, he turned into a man; in theme, style, and execution. He was always a musical genius, he just needed to break free of the limitations placed upon him by decades of lyrical idiocracy. I suggest others follow suit.
Tags: Avril Lavigne, God, lyrics, Nelly Furtado, Pearl Jam, Pink, silverchair
Love it! ;)
You totally hit the nail right on the head! Good work Neek, you really are the sheezy!
I’m glad you mentioned Neon Ballroom… i still remember the first day i heard it… the lyrics fascinated me so much that i had to sit there with the CD cover and read every word.
Kristen – Johns just went to a totally different place for NB, lyrically. The homophones struck me the most (idol/idle, excess/access, etc) along with how figurative he became. It’s a beautiful album! Mind you, he was off chops on Aropax and suffering intense agoraphobia, anorexia, paranoia and anxiety while he wrote the album.
I think what you have to say about rhyme is, frankly, really quite silly. I don’t know what you would consider musical gospel, but if you’re talking about Imagine, or Let It Be, Subterrean Homesick Blues, Bohemian Rhapsody, Stairway to Heaven or just about any other classic you can name, they’ve all had rhyme as their backbone. I wouldn’t say the lyrical abilities of Msrs Dylan, Lennon et al were “limited”…
When it comes down to it, lyrics are (or should be) poetry. Rhyme is a poetic technique, a perfectly legitimate one. If you don’t like this technique, or think that it is the stuff of Play School, there’s probably several thousand university English lecturers who would be keen to discuss it in regards to the works of Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Homer, Burns, Keats etc. Lyrics are poetry, and I would encourage you (or anyone interested in lyrics) to read up about poetry, it really gives you a better understanding of what comes through your speakers.
You’re totally right about the insipidity of lyrics in modern music (as in the example of Lavigne), but its outlandish (and comes across as blatantly elitist) to dismiss the entire technique of rhyme.
Hi Peter,
Never fear! I wasn’t condemning the entire technique of rhyme – I was merely criticising artists who insist on employing a technique they lack the smarts to execute well. The Beatles and Led Zep were masterminds who wrote good lyrics – but I wasn’t talking about good lyrics here (which is why I never referred to any of those artists.) My post was about bad lyrics, and why, in my humble opinion, they sometimes suck. If you can rhyme well like Lennon, it’s brilliant. If you can’t (like Lavigne), it’s awful.
I disagree that lyrics are poetry. (Or that they “should be poetry” – says who?) Sure, they have loads of similarities, but they’re definitely not the same thing. One is sung, the other spoken. Poems exist on their own, while lyrics are delivered through music. In addition, poems convey written meaning through a lot more than the words themselves (eg punctuation, the very layout on the page.) Secondary meaning for lyrics comes with the melody and vocal delivery.
I really don’t think it’s relevant to bring up Shakespeare or Homer as my discussion concerned contemporary musical artists. [But while we're on the subject, I think that there is also a common misconception that poetry should rhyme. Yes, it can rhyme and be amazing, but it's not required.]
I love a good rhyme, but a bad one makes me cringe. I was referring to the latter in my post. It’s meant to be funny. Let’s also remember the context here – I was writing a post about music, to be posted on The Music Blogs. If I wanted to talk about poetry, I’d do it on my personal blog.