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Do lyrics have to make sense for the song to be a hit?


Visconti

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Mind Eraser, No Chaser


Now run along face lift

If it kills I got news it aint a side effect

Call it a full rejecter

Fuel injected time corrected teenage obstacle


All i wanna do is have my mind erased

I'm begging ya pleading ya stop coma teasing us all

Drug company where's a pill for me

I call it mind eraser, no chaser at all

I could really need one of everything

Law abiding dick riding fun police leave us alone

Dulling the edge of a razor blade

What does it mean when the knife and the hand are your own


Gimme the reason why the mind's a terrible thing to waste

Understanding is cruel the monkey said as it launched to space

Know that i'm gonna be your dangerous side effect.

Ignorance is bliss until they take your bliss away


(Wooo, Shake It)


Robotic mom bought me

DIY kit lobotomy

It's a tuck taste dance craze movie of the week

Your buy the doll, kick up your bowl, then piss on the seats


All i wanna do is have my mind erased

I'm begging ya pleading ya stop coma teasing us all

Drug company, wheres a pill for me

It reads, Mind eraser, no chaser in bright lights

Im more in need than i've ever been

New-age goose-step on a karma collision

Dulling the edge of a razor blade

What does it mean when the knife and the hand are your own

(Your own, Your own, Your own)


Gimme the reason why the mind's a terrible thing to waste

Understanding is cruel the monkey said as it launched to space

Know that i'm gonna be your dangerous side effect

Ignorance is bliss until they take your bliss away


Gimmie the reason why the mind's a terrible thing to waste

Now know that i am your dangerous side effect


Now know that i am your dangerous side effect


Let me tell you to save it, just really i dont give a {censored}

There are some interesting bits in the lyrics but man, that music, oof. Why would people my age (apparently) want to play such puerile stuff? Can't they think of anything meaningful to do with their lives?

 

Rock really did die back when...

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There are some interesting bits in the lyrics but man, that
music
, oof. Why would people
my
age (apparently) want to play such puerile stuff? Can't they think of anything meaningful to do with their lives?


Rock really did die back when...



Wow. Not trying to be contrary but I really liked that.

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There are some interesting bits in the lyrics but man, that
music
, oof. Why would people
my
age (apparently) want to play such puerile stuff? Can't they think of anything meaningful to do with their lives?


Rock really did die back when...



Dood, can't you set aside your subjective reaction for the sake of the discussion? LOL. God forbid somebody brings up Blood On The Tracks in a general music topic. :p:D

I remember when TCV appeared I was curious to hear them. I actually was quite underwhelmed with the album that emerged. But this song sounds better/catchier than I remembered.

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Dood, can't you set aside your subjective reaction for the sake of the discussion? LOL. God forbid somebody brings up Blood On The Tracks in a general music topic.
:p:D

I remember when TCV appeared I was curious to hear them. I actually was quite underwhelmed with the album that emerged. But this song sounds better/catchier than I remembered.

I bought and paid for Blood on the Tracks, and dang it, I'm gonna slag it when I have a chance. :D

 

If I recall correctly, I'd been surrounded by later-Dylan apologists and allowed as how I thought "Idiot Wind" was a pretty good song -- but then, spurred by the discussion, I went back and listened to it again for the first time in a couple decades and decided I must have been drunk when I decided I liked that song.

 

Frankly, you can see the roots of what I don't like in later Dylan in earlier stuff, without question. Sometimes he just seemed to write because he thought he should be. No problem, except he recorded and released some of that stuff. (And yet he seemed to not put out some of his finest songs, with them leaking out in others' versions or in bootlegs like some of those collected in the Great White Wonder double-boot, which I have from the original run.)

 

Funny guy.

 

Taken on whole, one of my favorite writers, without question.

 

 

The old guy band above, OTOH... well... more power to 'em, you know, anyone who can make a buck in today's market and all that. It's just that that video pretty well captures at least a little of almost everything I ever rebelled against in corporate rock. Not that the addition of a Steve Perry or Dennis DeYoung vocal couldn't double up the dreadfulness for me, mind you. :D

 

 

Let me just issue my standard disclaimer at this point: there's no such thing as objecitvely bad music. (Although we can erect various performance or other criteria, but the importance of those criteria is, ultimately, subjective.)

 

If someone enjoys a given entertainment, then, in that context, it's all good.

 

Carry on, my wayward sons and daughters.

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Carry on, my wayward sons and daughters.



You're giving me more ammo in support of a notion I have whenever the topic of words vs music comes up: if you hate the music, you won't listen to it even if the words are pure genius. But if the music/groove/hooks are good we are often willing to go easy on the words if they fall short.

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They have the naivete and phony "aw shucksiness" of 50's and ruthless belligerence of 80's conservatives. They hope to move the country forward by moving it backwards.

 

A cynic might suspect that your second post above was plagiarized from someone who isn't a commercial spammer.

 

What about it, Sam?

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You're giving me more ammo in support of a notion I have whenever the topic of words vs music comes up: if you hate the music, you won't listen to it even if the words are pure genius. But if the music/groove/hooks are good we are often willing to go easy on the words if they fall short.

I'm all for giving folks ammo for a lively songwriting discussion.

 

But if that contention was true, I don't think anyone would have given anything past, maybe, the first Dylan album much of a listen. On that album, considerable pains were taken on the presentation. His singing is certainly his most controlled and mainstream folkie sounding. The guitar playing (at least some of which may actually be his) is well recorded and played. But it seems clear that Dylan wanted to be Dylan (whoever that is, eh?) and quickly broke out of the nicely crafted packaging of the first album with the now familiar mix of off-hand throwaway wisecrackerie and achingly detailed song portraiture that marked most of his mid 60s work.

 

Some of my favorite Dylan songs are a distinct challenge to listen to... it's only the words that pull me forward.

 

Whereas some of the stuff I find more negligible or even lyrically annoying, I didn't mind the singing and playing so much and had, in fact, been quite optimistic.

 

You're talking to someone who kept believing, comeback after comeback that this next Dylan album would be the one that would return him to peak form...

 

But after a while I stopped reading rock crits and the music press and all that nonsense got sorted out in my mind and I realized it was best to just let Dylan go on being Dylan and not put my own lame expectations on him.

 

I don't think it was until I bought Slow Train Coming that it really hit home that it was simply unfair and unrealistic to ever think that this guy was ever going to be the 60s Dylan again. But it took a long time to get myself there.

 

 

PS... once again I've pushed myself into dropping a big stack of old Dylan on the virtual changer. Highway 61 Revisited... "Like a Rolling Stone." That was the first Dylan record for me... a real eye opener... so sloppy, so meandering... but those vocals just etched into you and somehow Bloomfield and the rest seemed to weave through it all...

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But if that contention was true, I don't think anyone would have given anything past, maybe, the first Dylan album much of a listen.



I'll give you that. But there's a difference between you (as a young person) not liking Dylan's sound and you (as a wiser seasoned person) not liking the sound of Them Crooked Vultures. One is a dislike of the unknown/unfamiliar and the other is a dislike of something that's all too stale and (for you) all too familiar.

Still, I get your point.

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I'll give you that. But there's a difference between you (as a young person) not liking Dylan's sound and you (as a wiser seasoned person) not liking the sound of Them Crooked Vultures. One is a dislike of the unknown/unfamiliar and the other is a dislike of something that's all too stale and (for you) all too familiar.


Still, I get your point.

Ain't no still about it. You got that point. ;)

 

 

I may have hit too hard on the sound of Dylan, at least with regard to my own tastes. I'd been listening to folk blues, Dave Van Ronk was a fave already,* so the concept of someone singing in an aggressively outsider manner wasn't new. But the swagger and sneer maybe was. And it was refreshing.

 

*The radio show that was my guiding light in those days was hosted by a guy named John Davis (who is, I believe, still around) and who apparently had been a big Dylan fan until he went electric, which is just about where I came onstream with that show. So I would hear all these Dylan-penned songs but I'd hear them by anyone else, from Peter, Paul & Mary to BUffy St Marie.

 

When I finally started hearing the originals I remember thinking, Weird, he sings them in this monotone, yet everyone seems to be able to find a melody in them. I guess it's in the sheet music. :D But then as I continued listening, I realized that there actually was melodic content in his vocals, but that he basically didn't bother changing the shape (and therefor resonance) of his vocal apparatus much at all as he sang, so the more or less static resonance signature of his voice box, mouth, sinuses, etc, had an effect almost like a filter, letting through a narrow range of tones... Dylan's characteristic 60s voice.

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I'm all for giving folks ammo for a lively songwriting discussion.


But if that contention was true, I don't think anyone would have given anything past, maybe, the first Dylan album much of a listen.



i came in from the other end. first time i heard dylan, it was greatest hits 2, i thought it was horrible and he couldn't sing, so i didn't listen much to the first two songs, but then lay lady lay came on, and i thought "not only does this guy suck, but he actually has someone else singing on his own greatest hits album". but i liked the new voice, at least compared to the old, and figured out it was the same guy, and started listening more carefully. of course, my mind was blown pretty quick after that. now i can't get enough of his voice, and probably spin his cover albums as much as his self-penned ones.

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I think it is fairly obvious that lyrics do not have to make sense for the song to be a hit but in my humble opinion debating whether they should make sense or not is like debating whether pink is a nicer colour than blue. Generally speaking, I have a personal preference for lyrics that do make sense but I have a number of favourites where the lyrics don't make any real sense to me. Usually when a song does appeal to me that I cannot make out the lyrics to or the lyrics don't make sense to me it will be because the song somehow reminds me of a beautifully made sculpture. Somehow the song has come together with so much texture, musical story and perhaps emotional impact that I tend to want to stand back and marvel at it rather than understand it.

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I think it is fairly obvious that lyrics do not have to make sense for the song to be a hit but in my humble opinion debating whether they should make sense or not is like debating whether pink is a nicer colour than blue. Generally speaking, I have a personal preference for lyrics that do make sense but I have a number of favourites where the lyrics don't make any real sense to me. Usually when a song does appeal to me that I cannot make out the lyrics to or the lyrics don't make sense to me it will be because the song somehow reminds me of a beautifully made sculpture. Somehow the song has come together with so much texture, musical story and perhaps emotional impact that I tend to want to stand back and marvel at it rather than understand it.

Nicely stated.

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learn to. it'll be the greatest thing you'll ever do as a musician. criticizing dylan's voice is like criticizing picasso for drawing women inaccurately.

I like that.

 

Mind you, I'm not past criticizing Dylan's songwriting or voice but I think, nonetheless, you've got a real point. (Of course, Picasso, early on, 'proved' he was an entirely decent figurative artist, so there's a been there/done that aspect there.)

 

Speaking of Dylan's voice, "I Threw It All Away" (off Nashville Skyline) just came up in my newly redesigned daily playlist and the amount of tuneful singing he does in that song is just stunning, given the snarling, off-the-cuff sounding vocals he'd been slapping down during my favorite period (Highway 61, Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde). It's clear he's really putting some effort into using his vocal apparatus in ways he had seemingly barely explored before. (The first album probably had his most controlled singing to that point.)

 

Of course, coming when it did, Nashville Skyline struck a lot of Dylan fans like me as utterly weird. (Not as utterly weird as Self-Portrait, of course. That one probably will go down as one of the most bizarre big name projects ever.) Cornball was a description that seemed to come up again and again.

 

At the time, I basically figured the crashdown from his several year long speed jag in the aftermath of the motorcycle wreck just left him incapable of his former greatness. That may have been a somewhat parochial view, but, frankly, I've never been entirely able to shake it.

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Pass. Wear these designer jeans, you'll be (and everyone else) the talk of the town. Think
this
way, it's good for you. You ask to conventionalize the unconventional, which has been so-ascribed because it doesn't stand up to the popular vote.


I know Dylan's voice. Don't hear the music in it. I do hear air stumbling out of his voice box, some of it taking the olfactory bypass, but it doesn't do for me what I want music to do. Been tuned in for most of my 55 years but him I tune out. Him and Ethel Merman.



That is a shame...

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