I hear you. Once I became a satanist I got rid of all my Little Marcy records. This was my favourite but I could not sing along like before. Gives me the creeps now. The music is fine but the lyrics are disturbing.
For me, the worst offender is “Mary Long.” For some reason, that one always annoyed me, and not just because he tries to rhyme “virginity” with “stupidity.” I still love Purple, though… just not that song!
Farmer’s Daughter is pretty cringeworthy. The Mary Long one always struck me as a curio, almost political. It would be as if the James Gang, Aerosmith, Skynyrd etc., wrote a tune about Anita Bryant.
What do you mean? You have a problem with rhyming crazy and lazy several times in the same song??? haha The two Red Hot Chili Peppers albums from last year had some of the best music I've heard in years, and the vinyl sounds incredible. Those albums are such a pleasure to listen to. But... Anthony's lyrics... I know that I shouldn't expect much from Mr. Kiedis after decades of nonsense lyrics, but the words on those new albums are just meaningless. You'd swear that he's using a random word generator. There is no way that anyone can look at those lyrics and say "oh yeah man, I've been there! I totally get it." It's really hard to ignore absolute nonsensical words on top of such awesome music.
I know you had other reasons, but if I had to turn away from any artist for having self-important lyrics, I would lose a lot of albums in my collection. Many in the arts at their core are self-important. That kind of personality is often a driving force when it comes to their creativity.
Oh yeah, I quite agree. I love some of the images he conjures, but taken in whole sentences or more all coherence flies out of the window. I tend to listen to Yes in the same way I would Sigur Ros or the Cocteau Twins, who are deliberately not using "normal" language: the voice is another instrument/musical texture/part of the overall experience.
I came here to say "frank zappa" and coincidentally the poster just above me has said the same thing. His lyrics always seems to be on the brink of comedy but just not very funny. Awful.
I could imagine that being the case if lyrics were offensive enough but can't think of an example. Generally if the music is good enough to draw me in I can overlook lyrics. Two artists I enjoy in spite of the lyrics are Zappa and Waters-era Floyd.
Precisely. Just let the voice and the words wash over you and see what happens in your mind. Big fan of CT and SR too.
Generally, thinking about my own record collection, I find a great deal of parity between music and lyrics. That is what I'd hope for. I dont expect everyone to be a genius lyricist, but at they must at least have put the effort into finding their own voice. If the music is really fantastic then i think that might overshadow subpar lyrics - assuming they are not completely terrible. And inversely , I absolutely cannot listen to very boring music just for great lyrics. Both have to work in proportion.
The stupider James Brown's lyrics got, the more I liked his music. Of course, it wasn't because the lyrics got stupider, but still...
Neal Morse. A once great lyricist, with nice variety. Now a one-tracked sermon machine. Not my cup of tea.
I've sometimes speculated that "My Weapon" is almost a parody of wounded masculinity, not unlike "Sgt. Rock", but in this case, the parody might have been unintentional. Fortunately, they had a much more assured lyricist in Andy Partridge.
He definitely comes to mind for me with this question. I actually enjoy a lot of his earlier attempts at social commentary, but as time wore on, he seemed to grow sneeringly sardonic and downright nasty at times. It's one thing when you're lampooning the famous and the powerful, but when you start targeting the heartbroken and the suicidally depressed, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I generally prefer his more instrumental focused music.
Yes. I've got a problem with sexism in lyrics (racism too, of course). And sometimes I can't get into a song because lyrics are so ridiculous. For instance, this 'masterpiece' that is Bohemain Rapsody. They take themselves so seriously and the opening lyrics are: 'Mama, just killed a man'. Yeah sure you did Freddie...
As both a French speaker and a long-time big consumer of songs in the English language, I am sort of “trained” from the young age in discriminating music from lyrics. It so often happened that as a younger man I would love a song, and not get its lyrics at all (that was mostly in the pre-Internet days)... So aeons later when/if I finally did get the lyrics, if they turned out to be offensive to me, it had become impossible for me to disown the piece of music they were set to. In the end, I think I agree with Frank Zappa that one could make the most beautiful music in the world and be a complete xxxxxxe.
Yep. Lyrics glorifying theiving, pimping, drug dealing, looting, cop killing, calling women bitches and hos, and the n word all go straight to the bin.
