Do you like songs to be highly emotionally driven or rather cool and laidback?

I was just thinking of this the other day. Let's divide songs in to two categories. You have the highly emotional category where the singer is literally grinding his soul through the loudspeakers and the lyrics are extremely personal and emotional. Examples of this category would be "Nothing compares to you" by Shinnead O'Connor or "Darkness on the edge of Town" by Springsteen or "I will always love you" by Withney Houston or "Mojo Pin" by Jeff Buckley.

The other category are songs where feel is more laid back and cool and the lyrics are more distanced, a bit more in the direction of storytelling, political themes or clever observations/black humor. Examples would be "Hurricane", by Bob Dylan, "Desperadoes under the eaves" by Warren Zevon, "Common People" by Pulp.

My question is: What do you prefer? Or to rephrase that: If you think about the songs that have meant the most to you in your life, which category do they fit into?

I have a theory that girls who are not musicians tend to throw themselves at everything that sounds emotional no matter how good or bad the performance or text is (I mean: How else would James Blunt have sold so many albums) and that guys tend to go for the latter category..

I think theres room for both, I have a different personality every day, and some days I just need a chill sesh to calm me down and help me breathe, and other times I need a nice wailing out of words to get me going.

It depends on the mood, and what I'm going through at the time

And let's be serious, all pop singers need is that one hook.

You're Beautiful*cough

to sell a ton of records, and then most of them never stick around, or switch genres later on, much like how John Mayer has that one pop song on his album, Your Body is a Wonderland, Daughters, Waiting on the World to Change, and then he makes the rest of the album a guitar-driven and lyrical, instead of that one little hook.

The rockers however, we have it tough, because so many people have left their impression in the genre that its blasphemy every time we step in a footprint of theirs.

Its sad, but this "hook" crappy song is necessary to sell to teenage girls, probably the largest album-buying demographic. The saddest part is that those songs win Grammy's over the artist's stronger stuff like John's "Heart of Life" or "Stop This Train", and you could say this about many, many artists.

Another that comes to mind for me is Modest Mouse's album Good News for People Who Love Bad News; Float On was their single, but yet it is completely against the grain with the rest of the album, and I find myself just skipping the track to get onto the more emotionally driven, "I wish you were dead" stuff.

I don't think I necessarily prefer one over the other but I definitely have moods where I want to hear one or the other.

And I suppose I'm more often in a mood where I want to hear something with a little distance, these days.

Like a lot of older folks who grew up on the often fiery, passionate rock and soul of the 60s, I have a lot of affection for soul singers (like Aretha in the 60s or Otis Redding) or the anything goes playing of Jimi Hendrix of even MC5 -- but I also like the smooth guys like Marvin Gaye or Al Green -- or the in-betweeners who could work both sides, just about to perfection, like the late, great Sam Cooke (there's a guy they'll never stop sticking "late, great" in front of).

With regard to subsequent music, I went through a real jag in the early 90s when I was listening to a lot of grindy stuff like Skinny Puppy but one day I kind of just flipped and thought... I'm over that stuff... and I found myself moving to the mid-90s trip hop/downtempo music that was so influenced by the dub I'd spent much of the 70s and 80s listening to.

These days I listen to a lot of bluegrass and alt-roots (love that Iron & Wine guy and Modest Mouse) but also dipping into some of the neo-progressive waters (fascinated by The Mars Volta's self-involved artiness) and even some mainstream pop (I can't help it, I really love some of BEP's stuff).

And, as I have more or less steadily since my introduction to it in the early 60s, I still listen to a lot of classic bossa nova as well as some of the trip-hop/hip hop influenced "nova bossa nova."

Hmm... I guess that's not a very either/or answer...

PS... Spurred by this thread, I guess, I just put on TMV's "drunkship of lanterns" -- I don't think there are too many tracks that I can possibly listen to that are more in your face -- yet I find it far less disturging/annoying than a lot of really standard radio fare.

peoples' emotional states are not all the same. i think music covers a lot of em, and i'm glad it does.

Not only do we all have different tastes for things - we even have different interpretations. I consider Dylan's Hurricane to be full of anger and passion, not cool and laid back as you describe it...although you might feel it's detached because it's mostly a third person narrative.

I understand what you mean though. I am a big Eno fan, especially of his mid 70s rock albums. His vocal delivery is what I consider to be very detached...hardly ever do I feel that one of his songs is a direct path to his heart and mind. But I'm also a fan of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album, which is as painfully direct as can be. Both have their function in my life - sometimes I need one over the other - but the next day the situation may be reversed.

As for the generalization about girls - I ain't gonna touch that one with a ten foot drum stick.

I know it's not the subject of the thread, but I always thought "Common People" was pretty emotionally drive.

You'll never live like common people

You'll never do what common people do

You'll never fail like common people

You'll never watch your life slide out of view, and dance and drink and screw

Because there's nothing else to do.

The problem with this approach is that you're dividing songs into categories that they can't really be divided neatly into. I don't think I would put Springsteen's "Darkness on the Edge of Town" in the same category as Houston's (or Parton's) "I Will Always Love You". There are so many variables. Some lyrics are confessional, or more a direct expression of feelings, and some are more detached, just commenting on a situation without necessarily saying how they feel about it. Both can be tremendously effective. In general, I might go for the less direct, more observational approach--it's more in keeping with my own personality. It doesn't tell me how to feel, it sort of just hints at it; letting me fill in the blanks. But the other approach works well too.

There are many variables beyond just the song. For one thing, it depends on an artist's overall persona. When all an artist does is confessional, heart-on-the-sleeve type songs, you kinda feel like telling them to shut up and get a grip. However, when an artist can switch between one or the other, like Springsteen, for instance, it makes their deeply emotional songs much more powerful. It's all about contrast. No song exists in a vacuum; it depends on the artist performing it, and it's context in the artist's overall repetoire.

Also, it depends on the performance. If an artist shouts their feelings over the rooftops, like Celine Dion, or possibly the worst culprit of all time, Michael Bolton, it can make you feel like smashing the radio. There's something to be said for an understated performance, it can make a sentiment seem much more intimate and personal. Of course, sometimes it's great to hear someone really belt it out; just not all the time.

Similarly, if all an artist does is detached, observational songs, they can start to seem dull and two-dimensional.

So yeah--I'd say there's room in life for both. There's got to be variety.

Well, I agree that Hurricane is full of anger and passion, but Dylan brings distance to the text through telling the story in a third person perspective. I think that makes the song even more powerful. And he tells the story without an overuse of wailing or OHHing or direct statements and then all the emotion is left dripping between the lines.

Actually there are some lines that are pretty direct, like "It makes me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game." (I guess that's as direct as it comes) so maybe that was a bad example.

With my category of highly emotional I was referring more to the very personal kind where you have a vocalist grinding his/her voice through the mike, singing things like: "I love you so so SO SO MUUUCH, oh ohoh OH , I NEEEEED you so so SO BAAAD" and so on.

Dylan is expressing his resentment for the justice system very clearly, but he does it through clever storytelling rather than forcing the message accross with exessive directness, IMO.

I would say that that's more of a vocal style than anything else. I listen to lots of music and lyrics that could easily be considered "emotional," but the delivery is usually nothing like that.