What's more important? Lyrics or music? (Poll)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Blastproof, Nov 9, 2019.

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  1. DiBosco

    DiBosco Forum Resident

    Location:
    West Yorkshire, UK
    Music, clearly, it's not poetry. However, if the lyrics are so banal like Huey Lewis and the News' efforts for example, it can stop me listening altogether.

    Great lyrics can sends shivers through me though and make an OK melody into something special.
     
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  2. let him run...

    let him run... Senior Member

    Location:
    Colchester, VT USA
    Re: Springsteen
    In the deluxe sets and some boots, you'll find a number of songs where lyrics and melodies have been switched around to see if it works better. Although, it's too late at night to grab the Darkness box, but I seem to remember Candy's Room being one that was played with that way. There's a version slowed way down using the melody from another song. From looking at his reproduced notebooks, it's clear the guy is a real packrat. If he likes a set of lyrics, he keeps it filed away, hoping to find a home for them.
     
  3. let him run...

    let him run... Senior Member

    Location:
    Colchester, VT USA
    When a song is purely an instrumental, it's difficult to be wrong voting music over non-existing lyrics.
     
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  4. GoodVibrations47

    GoodVibrations47 Every living being is a dancer

    Location:
    Australia
    moving/great music +meaningful/great lyrics = jackpot
    Sometimes lyrics are great because they perfectly articulate what the music is already seeming to say
     
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  5. let him run...

    let him run... Senior Member

    Location:
    Colchester, VT USA
    I think you pretty well missed my point. If you'd quoted a bit more of my statement, you'd have noticed I was speaking of a different era of songwriting where the lyric was often at least as important as the musical accompaniment. Maybe, even more important.
    I went on to mention Dylan's Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll as a song whose lyrics are far more important to the song than the melody.
    I'm a bit confused about your "Ode to Joy" reference. It sounds like you're saying it has no lyrics. It does have lyrics. Lyrics which preceded Beethoven music. I don't know really what they are because I don't speak German. But, I'll take a guess that Ludwig liked them. Enough to use them in the 4th Movement of his 9th Symphony.
     
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  6. The lyrics of "Ode To Joy" are joyous and beautiful. They add a lot to Beethoven's 9th although the music is great anyhow. The German lyrics and an English translation were on the back cover of the LP I had eons ago. I memorized them and could sing the whole thing when I was in junior high.
     
  7. HfxBob

    HfxBob Forum Resident

    Their lyrics aren't that bad, even if they don't always make a lot of sense.
     
  8. ALAN SICHERMAN

    ALAN SICHERMAN Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx, NY

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    It depends on the artist. If you're Bob Dylan, lyrics are more important. If you're Mozart, it's the music.
     
  9. Yovra

    Yovra Collector of Beatles Threads

    Which is my point, really; a musically terrible song with great lyrics is horrible to listen to....a song with a nice beat/melody/chords is still nice an can even be great, even is the lyrical contents are nonsene or questionable
    • De Do Do Do De Da Da Da-The Police
    • Flying-The Beatles
    • Tequila- The Champs
    • Bohemian Rhapsody-Queen
     
  10. Rick Robson

    Rick Robson

    Location:
    ️️
    That's a completely agreeable point of view, where did I say otherwise? Please point me that out.
    Anyway, I think it's quite pretensious to suggest that the music for "Ode To Joy" was composed having those lyrics in mind.
    And, for the record, "Ode To Joy" lyrics had countless translations to other languages, if you read my statement again you understand that I first listened to those lyrics when I still was a child and, of course, didn't get anything about it because I never learned the German language.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2019
  11. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    From my perspective, as someone who writes plenty of music with lyrics, even though I don't care about lyrics in a normal way:

    * I like vocals in music
    * I don't always just want "vocalizing" or scat singing (though sometimes I do want that)
    * There are musical effects you can achieve with precomposed phonemes that you can't really achieve with just vocalizing or scat singing
    * Precomposed phonemes that aren't words in a natural language are difficult for singers to recall (even though I sometimes do write at least passages like that); they can also be much more difficult to notate than phonemes via natural languages
    * Many people do enjoy lyrics from a semantic perspective, so giving them words in a natural language provides that--though I try to provide words that are open to a lot of different interpretations
    * I'm also someone who likes a lot of humor in music, so often enough I use lyrics in natural languages for humor purposes, too.
     
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  12. Rick Robson

    Rick Robson

    Location:
    ️️
    Yeah no doubt about that, I'm completely aware of my great fault of not having acknowledged them yet, have to do it soon :hide:
     
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  13. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    What definition would you be using that would enable saying that there's no music without melody?

    Or would you say that no stuff that's just indefinite pitch percussion instruments, say, is music?
     
  14. David Johnson

    David Johnson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta Georgia
    That what I meant, I just didn’t construct the statement well. Lol!
     
  15. Rick Robson

    Rick Robson

    Location:
    ️️
    In fact, indeed there are pitched (or tuned) percussion instruments for playing different notes. But my point is that melody as the most important element of music demands at least instruments capable of producing a minimum set of notes. Now please, don't bring me again to a discussion about the "existence of music without melody" because I realise that's a falacy indeed.
     
  16. Trixmay 988

    Trixmay 988 Demere's Dreams

    Location:
    Perth, Australia
    How can both be more important than each other?
    Sometimes it really seems as though people don't understand the concept of either either on this forum.
     
  17. WithinYourReach

    WithinYourReach Resident Millennial

    Location:
    Austin, TX
    Honestly both are just as important, but if there is a choice to be made it would be 'Music'. Otherwise a lot of metal or modern day pop or hip-hop would not exist.
     
  18. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    But conversely, the best music, can't make up for bad lyrics.
     
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  19. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    There are tuned (in the sense of pitched) percussion instruments, but that's why I specifically asked you about stuff ONLY with percussion of indefinite pitch. Do you consider that music?

    Melody isn't conventionally just a series of pitches, by the way. Other minimum requirements are that the pitches are arranged into phrases and that those pitched phrases are emphasized texturally (so arrangement -wise). (This is why not all music with multiple pitched instruments playing single-note lines is contrapuntal, by the way.)
     
  20. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    It's probably a sign of how much I value lyrics that I don't think there can be bad lyrics.
     
  21. HfxBob

    HfxBob Forum Resident

    That's debatable, of course, and a lot of people obviously disagree, otherwise Bon Jovi wouldn't have been so successful.
     
  22. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    Lyrics are the main reason why I can't listen to 99.9% of pop music, though not the only reason. :righton:
     
  23. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    Of course. Terrible lyrics never got in the way of musical success. But I won't listen to those records. :righton:
     
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  24. HfxBob

    HfxBob Forum Resident

    I think when someone says both, they're saying this doesn't really work as a simplistic binary proposition. I tend to agree.
     
  25. PJayBe

    PJayBe Forum Resident

    I've got to say music if pushed for a choice. There's songs around where I don't really take much notice of the words, or can't make them out that I still like. Having said that I can be the other way round sometimes!!!
     
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