'Serenity'
There's a lady plays her fav'rite records/On the jukebox ev'ry day/All day long she plays the same old songs/And she believes the things that they say/She sings along with all the saddest songs/And she believes the stories are real/She lets the music dictate the way that she feels.
Oh, did I mention I ate spaghetti with Game Theory? Two friends and I got to the club really early - they only let us in because one friend was on the guest list. The only people there were the bar staff and the headline band, Game Theory. The bartender and the members of the band asked if we were the opening act. Then the band invited us to join them in their spaghetti and garlic bread dinner....
(This was in Madison, January '88. Was kinda' dead because the UW was still out.)
Total lyric ho.
Its only recently that I've begun to find joy in individual instruments at all.
Yeah I`m all about the lyrics. And more importantly, the passion. I don`t even have to quite get what you`re saying so long as you sing it with passion. But as a songwriter myself, I care most about the lyrics. Absolutely.
The SO otoh listens purely to the music, and listens technically at that. We have our broadest disagreements over punk and rap.
Oooh. I'd totally back you up on both of those, Liese. And I think there's important technical and stylistic artistry being displayed in both those forms of music.
And then there are The Roots who transcend it all!
The music, definitely. Really good lyrics will lift a song for me and really bad ones will bring it down, but there's a huge swath in the middle where I barely even notice them.
Heck, I've played IN bands where I didn't notice the lyrics to some songs for months after learning the music.
Jon B. is me. I have to concentrate to hear lyrics. I can just let the music happen to me. That includes the singers voice. It can just be an instrument to my ears.
In other news, that kamikaze guy Joe Stack was in a band. His bandmates excised him from their web page yesterday, but thanks to the wonder of the Wayback Machine, you can view what once was.
So, when it comes to music, what to you appreciate more, the music or the lyrics?
The music has to be there for me. I love and can appreciate good lyrics on their own, but if the music doesn't work for me, I can't listen.
And there's plenty of music I love, that makes me move or whatever, where they lyrics are just throwaways, and it doesn't matter. But it's best when they're both wonderful.
Luna has an album out that's entirely covers called Lunafied. Most or all the songs were previously released, for example, "Season of the Witch" was on the I Shot Andy Warhol soundtrack. Anyway, Linafied has a cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" that I like a lot, perhaps more than the original.
Um, what's the point of this post? There should be more Suicide covers? I guess....
eta: This album also has an excellent cover of Wire's "Outdoor Miner." And of a song I'm not familiar with called "La Poupee Qui Fait Non."