Lyrics can be experienced to be good in different ways, like poetic, informing, funny, socially-engaged or

How do you find lyrics to be good?

And I hope, you'll enjoy it! 

David_D wrote: How do you find lyrics to be good?

More often than not when it's in a language I don't understand.

But I often love Joni Mitchells lyrics and storytelling. Like in Coyote... Rainy Night House... Carey... Free Man in Paris. Kind of straight forward yet very poetic and sophistcated. And her arrangements always seem to match every word sung. Yes, that's when I really love good lyrics.

They got me a good grade for English at high-school where I used the lyrics of Harold Land by Yes and Forgotten Sons by Marillion as examples of contemporary poetry...

Otherwise, I don't have a recipe for what makes lyrics good; I can like silly lyrics, very poetic lyrics, committed lyrics, etc. as long as they're well written, but I don't know what "well written" is about...

Not for everybody, and I wouldn't say, there's much to complain about. 

I have to say, Rollon, that I like your posts quite a lot, mostly being informative, interesting and enjoyable. 

At university (Univ of Illinois, 1973-77) I had intended to pursue medicine.  However, at this time, the USA was in turmoil from the Viet Nam war, and the deteriorating environment made headlines nightly.  It was very depressing. 

Jon Anderson's lyrics changed me and inspired me to pursue a path towards political peace and environmental justice! 

Getting over overhanging trees, let them rape the forest

Thoughts would send our fusion

Clearly to be home

Getting over wars we do not mean or so it seems so clearly

Sheltered with our passion

Clearly to be home

 I thought "I'll be damned if I'll stand by and let them rape the forests!"   Therefore, I changed academic direction and subsequently became an award-winning environmental scientist.  

I told this story to Jon Anderson after a concert in Chicago (35th Anniversary Tour, May 4th, 2004) and he gave me a wonderful, sweet smile! 

This is my present consultancy.... http://www.neochloris.com" rel="nofollow - http://www.neochloris.com

Otherwise lyrics that make me smile, chuckle, chortle or laugh out loud; as as longtime UK expat, the lyrics of Half Man Half Biscuit do this and are at the same time a goldmine of cultural information about my homeland.
To some extent also goes for Jethro Tull, Strawbs, The Damned, Ian Dury (and the Blockheads) et al.

On the other hand I get irritated by obscure and arty-farty words from the likes of Fish ("Fugazi", the song, for example) or Jon Anderson.

Hi,

I do not look at "lyrics" any different than I do any poem, or literature ... the "idea" is the same, even if the medium is slightly different.

The only thing that bothers me, is someone being "clever" and thinking themselves a good lyricist, which he/she might be for that song, or band, but in general, really poor on its own ... and the truth of the words is them standing up on their own without the music ... you still have the inner visions from it, which is something I like to joke that rock fans lack, which is why they have to be "told" the story!

The problem is that the "story" can be a lie, and thus not meaningful, even if the singer makes it look important, but in the end ... you're getting fooled ... again and again, and if I may say so, many of us, at times myself included, still don't know we're getting fooled! And the many thoughts and comments here, at time for me, really confuse matters even worse.

The so-called "arty-farty" words, is simply a comment for a person that is not sure what it all means ... Fish, for example, has been downright serious and on topic all his life in the lyrics he comes up with and sings ... so considering him that is weird, when he is simply more educated than the majority of rock singers out there that know nothing but the beat and a song! We might as well call Shakespeare "arty-farty" because half the time we have no idea what he is on about, specially when he is being downright bawdy, which was his way of making sure the audience stayed with the play!

I tend to like socially-engaging lyrics (like Lennon's Working Class Hero) best  and putting some spite and irony into singing those lyrics help out a bit. 

Floyd/Waters lyrics have certainly had an impact or influence on me (either in everyday life or philosophy), as did early Jethro Tull (Aqualung and especially TAAB). Some early Genesis, Caravan, VdGG, Rush tracks' lyrics have also had a slight impact on me. (Marillion's Script is also a biggie, but that's about it in that area)

In the French realm, Jacques Brel and Noir Désir have had +/- the same type of (relatively heavy) impact on me. The slam of Grand Corps Malade certainly invite me to have thoughts about what he says. 

In general, it's somewhat quite harder for me to ignore French lyrics, so I'm harsher and more demanding when it come to francophone texts, but have found a higher appreciation in that area. I would even risk a generality in saying that on the average, French lyrics are generally of better quality than other neighboring languages. 

==============

There is also another category of lyrics that I tend to listen to are those visually-arresting (if that makes sense), being either funny  (the Dog, The Dog, he's at it again), poetic (maybe not that much in Jon's way), or simply a good storyline (Child In Time). Claude Nougaro's lyrics can be profound and finny at the same time. 

Of course, successive lyrics in a concept album enter this second category (like Gong's RGI trilogy), as long as I dig the concept's subject. 

Interesting. I'd also say that Polish pre-1989 lyrics can be very good and suprisingly system-critical.

There is also another category of lyrics that I tend to listen to are those visually-arresting (if that makes sense), being either funny  (the Dog, The Dog, he's at it again), poetic (maybe not that much in Jon's way), or simply a good storyline (Child In Time). Claude Nougaro's lyrics can be profound and finny at the same time.

I love Child in Time lyrics quite a lot.

Quite amazing life-changing experience with lyrics which can happen in some extraordinary circumstances. 

Sean Trane wrote: ... In the French realm, Jacques Brel and Noir Désir have had +/- the same type of (relatively heavy) impact on me. The slam of Grand Corps Malade certainly invite me to have thoughts about what he says.  In general, it's somewhat quite harder for me to ignore French lyrics, so I'm harsher and more demanding when it come to francophone texts, but have found a higher appreciation in that area. I would even risk a generality in saying that on the average, French lyrics are generally of better quality than other neighboring languages.  ...

Hi,

A lot of this was what brought me to ANGE really early on ... the atmospheric, the poetic, and the nature of the singing was not about the song ... it was about the story and its content. To me, being Portuguese (still!), this makes sense within the Latin languages, although I have not felt quite the same about Spanish or Portuguese music at all ... Italian is a bit different, at least in how it is done ... for example ... Banco was incredible, but the singer made it happen, with his poetic and operatic voice. Le Orme, was really nice, and soft, and very clean in their lyrics, despite some ... we might consider not very good translations. PFM was really great in the early days, until all of a sudden the "story" was killed, for a song, and that was the end of them for me.

Then, you look at a Peter Hammill, and even a Kate Bush, and the individuality is about the emotion and the expression, many times as theatrical as is possible, which to me is similar to the early ANGE (in a weird sort of way), but it becomes something that most people don't like in rock music ... too much individuality and no one understands anything seems to be the problem.

But the history of the arts, like it or not, has been about the individuality, so I'm always wondering why a song without individuality, or some of the women you hear on the radio these days that have the voice and know the notes and have no soul behind it whatsoever. Heck, the kitchen and bath scenarios are usually better than that!

I'm not sure that "lyrics" are the important thing ... you can take Shakespeare and smash it senseless and no one will get anything, just like you can channel Ian and make it awful. People don't like Jon, because they dislike the idea, the concept and the philosophy which is so far and away from western bullsh*t! Reminds me of Ginsberg ... reading his stuff never got through but one day, in a silly movie about so much crap, he reads his own poem and the words have a very strong life ... same thing for Burroughs ... it's better heard, not read! (we keep looking for meanings and can't find them and it distracts us away from the "lyrics")

While concerning Fish, I can tell that I like a lot the lyrics of Script for a Jester's Tear, and not least on "He Knows, You Know", "Chelsea Monday" and "Forgotten Sons".

"arty-farty"? That's harsh TBH, especially applied to Fish's lyrics. I disagree. 

Jon Anderson's lyrics? In Yes, maybe, but it's never bothered me. I don't like his solo work, so I don't care there TBH. 

indeed interesting, Mosh

I would like to take back what I said about Fish and JA; I over-generalized my feelings about their lyrics and didn't stop to think before posting.

Although both writers have words that make me cringe ("Fugazi" and "Close To The Edge" to name one from each), both have lyrics that move me, that I sing along to, or relate to (the whole of Misplaced Childhood from Fish or "Turn Of The Century" from JA).

Apologies to both songsmiths and offended progsters on here.

I don't understand your point of view, Paul, but okay, you made your choice.

I really get into the internal rhymes and the SOUND of the lyrics. I also respond to great lines. 

"The carpet crawlers heed their callers." - all the c, r, and a sounds and flow makes me happy

"You got to get in to get out." - just a great one liner

--from one of the most lyrically brilliant songs in prog IMO.

"I know what I like and I like what I know." - another great one liner

Thanks, David!  Back in the stone ages, prog rockers wrote a lot of material with a strong apocalyptic undertone.  I think they were expressing their feelings about Viet Nam and the deteriorating environment through their music. 

Examples include "Epitaph" by King Crimson (Viet Nam), "Children of the Universe" by Flash (environment), etc. 

I discovered this music at a young and formative age, and it definitely inspired me to pursue a path that would address the world's problems.  I discussed this with Ray Bennett, bassist of Flash, at length in an email exchange.  

Recently, I discussed climate change with Sir Brian May, PhD, and we had a fun back & forth!  We were both unaware of certain aspects of climate change that the other knew about.  Bri referred me to this paper: 

"An improved model for the infrared emission from the zodiacal dust cloud: cometary, asteroidal and interstellar dust,"

M. Rowan-Robinson‹ and B. May

Astrophysics Group, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ

Hi,

I imagine that "Epitath" is more online with the days of the IRA and the bombs, when your friends would more than likely be involved, than the Americans in Vietnam. It's one of the reasons why ITCOTCK is such an important snapshot of the late 60's and that time in London ... and Idi Amin is quite present in the 20th Century Schizoid man ... but we can't see that now, we age has blinded us a long time ago ... we now think lyrics are literature, not even a short story, or one act play anymore ... bigger than literature altogether, I suppose because many of us refuse to compare and find that ... yeah! I like Ian, and Jon, and all of them ... but T. S. Elliot they aren't and we go around like the women thinking of Michelangelo!

If anybody would like to share some of their fave lyrics with others, there's good possibility for it in this thread 

https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=129673" rel="nofollow - Poetic Pieces for the Mind and Spirit

but I should maybe mention that only excerpts of lyrics are allowed to be quoted on the PA forum. 

Thank you, great contribution!  From "Epitaph" - 

Usually, I ignore lyrics unless they're too prominent to be ignored. An exception is Peter Hammill whose lyrics in VdGG and solo I enjoy for a variety of reasons. A while ago, I wrote a list of favourite VdGG lyrics:

"I was thinking about thinking but it really didn't get me very far."

"I run because I don't know where the prison lies."

"You'll begin to wonder if the points of all the ancients myths are solemnly directed straight at you."

"Ghosts betray you, ghosts betray you, in the night they steal your eye from its socket and the ball hangs fallen on your cheek."

"It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone."

"Alone, he opens to the world... but it's much too late. He's been left, in the end, without a face."

"She's into lizards, she's into snakes, he's into trauma - still got the shakes from a lady who only talked dogs and cats making love in the alley - she thought like that."

"Living, if you claim that all that entails is breathing, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking, spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down and ultimately passing away time which no longer has any meaning."

From his solo work:

"I'm just a passenger passing through, I'm just an average chap. (We're all normal)"

"They got bacteria to drop us where we stand, they got diseases still unknown to man, they got the virus and a microgram's enough to do in a continent."

"The current affair gets to be all our business, it's filtered in through the T.V. screen. The norm, the average... what is this, when it goes blank what does that all mean?"

"Oh, we're left with a black-and-white movie, a positional state of affairs, an obsessional interest in moving just to prove that we're there, sitting targets in the car."

"No, I know how to behave in the restaurant now, I don't tear at the meat with my hands. If I've become a man of the world somehow, that's not necessarily to say I'm a worldly man."

"The diagram is so confusing, anagrammatical the mystery. I wake myself up, shake myself up, break myself apart and find in me the esoteric machinery, the esoteric invisibly."

Thanks, Charles.

I think the idea of Vietnam, along with the Cold War in general (as China and the Soviet Union were both involved in Indochina), weighed just as heavily on Brit musicians as it did Americans.

I cited King Crimson's mention of napalm as a direct nod to Vietnam, and in less than a year those blokes from Birmingham Black Sabbath echoed the anxiety on the album Paranoid, including the direct reference:

great lyrics from ItCotCK

Can you tell a bit about those reasons?

Right!  Sting also took on the Russians and Ronald Reagan in his brilliant song "Russians!"  

I was commuting/living in the UK back in the early/mid 1990s, and was sitting in a 747 at Heathrow, waiting to take off....suddenly, a bunch of British SAS soldiers came on board with dogs, small machine pistols etc. and went from row to row, looking intently!  

I was told it was due to the Irish Republican Army, who were lobbing mortar shells at Heathrow or some-such! 

Very terrifying stuff, and Europe still had plenty of terrorism to fear from what I read. 

Americans tend to make our own terrorists, and we give them all the guns they want.  Madness.

Peace, brother! 

 

Michael Rowan-Robinson was one of Brian May's co-supervisors for his Ph.D. thesis. Way back in the day I read Rowan-Robinson's The Cosmological Distance Ladder for one of my astro classes in college. That's cool that you got to talk with Brian about science. 

Due to some technical matter, some posts have been deleted, so here's a new one from me as a compensation for

a couple of mine:

Lyrics can be very positively influential on the way I experience all the sonic parts of the music which I've very clearly 

noticed with not least VdGG's "Killer".

So, some lyrics give you a lot to think about, Prophesy, and especially Peter Hammill's. Some of his lyrics may also very well 

be those I'm most fond of myself.

David_D wrote: So, some lyrics give you a lot to think about, Prophesy, and especially Peter Hammill's. Some of his lyrics may also very well be those I'm most fond of myself.

 

There is one other Peter Hammill (VdGG) lyric that I should mention:

 

"I prophesy disaster and then I count the cost... I shine but, shining, dying, I know that I am almost lost."

 

This lyric comes from "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers". Before the phrase "I prophesy disaster" became my username, it was the name of a VdGG compilation album I had. This compilation album was one of the first CDs I purchased during the '90s, and my second VdGG CD (after "H to He, Who am the Only One", which I purchased because I had worn out my LP). At this stage, I had most VdGG albums on vinyl, but did not have "The Aerosol Grey Machine" or "Vital", and "I Prophesy Disaster" had a number of tracks I didn't already have. I eventually got "The Aerosol Grey Machine" and "Vital", but "I Prophesy Disaster" was a good album to have while my VdGG collection was incomplete. It could be said that my username came from the name of the compilation album more so than from the lyric in "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers". Even so, that lyric from "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" was considered significant enough to name a compilation album after it, and I agree.

 

The Wall by Kansas start to finish is a great frame of reference for me. And honestly, not prime Kansas but I think of the line from Hold On often, "Hold on, cause it's closer than you think, and you're standing on the brink. Hold on- cause there's something on the way, your tomorrows not the same as today.

And honestly, many of my favorite Rush lyrics come from the 80s Grace/Power Windows era. Even though much of it is on the nose cheese, I love Marathon, Manhattan Project, Grand Designs and the likes

I think most of all, the song Think of Me With Kindness by Gentle Giant has had one of the most profound lyrical impacts of me. The perfect song to mark the end of a relationship that just didn't work out, or the growing apart/parting of an old friend. I Think of You by Renaissance is a good sort of contrast to this.

But I have also to say that I like much lyrics from a lot of other artists, and that can be for different reasons, and always 

together with the specific sonic parts of the music.

I can relate to this last part A LOT. When lyrics actually started to mean something to me in college, this song (as well as The Song Is Over by The Who) opened to the door to that realization. 

Also, good to see you on the fora again Doug! I missed your input. I see those jobs be keepin ya busy.

The guy who was one of the best lyricists ever is unfortunately Italian. I mean Fabrizio De Andre'. In the same legacy I'd put Leonard Cohen

In another way, I am charmed by inuendo, like with classic Psych Rock being about getting blasted on psychedelics (and weed), so that's always fun.

I lastly thought about more specifically tongue-in-cheek lyrics, like the pissy content of AWATS by Todd Rundgren. So, whether it's really rich lyrical content, painting a picture, or silly, snide lyrics, I'll take it gladly.

This has definitely caused a chill, time to time. 

Still by Peter Sinfield. I remember reading an interview with him in which the interviewer mentioned that there seemed to be some "digs at Fripp" nestled in the lyrics, and that Great Deceiver may have been a "tit-for-tat."

Interviewer clearly was not familiar with the status of Crimson's lyrical duties in 1973.

Anyway, when I finally listened to Still, I was on high alert for said digs at Fripp, and found quite a treasure trove of them in Envelopes of Yesterday:

I am unsure where in this sentence Sinfield intended to put the comma, but it's a wonderful double meaning ("I needed you for crumbs, your need was me" versus "I needed you, for crumbs your need was me" -- which one of them needed the crumbs?) with a bit of meaningful imagery thrown in there, crumbs being small amounts of bread, and bread being money -- very Sinfieldian (does anyone say that other than me? )

"We cheered and passed the sanguine flask till the ice man made me see"

"Don't blame me if my smoke and steam obscured your rutted track,
I only meant to startle you not offer you my back
To ride upon and overload with your jars of unbaked clay.
You can find your guide to the pulpit ride
in the dreary envelopes of yesterday."

Nice post, yes-no-and-why, and my welcome to you on the PA forum.  

Hi,

... where do the actors go, after the show? ...

Music in of itself can move me, and poetry can move me, but when the two are combined in a cohesive way, it can move me to tears. One of my main issues with some of Yes' music is that I have a hard time understanding and interpreting the lyrics, to the point where it almost feels arbitrary. Sometimes the music reflects that.

The other day I was taking a walk and listening to one of my favorite songs of all time, "Never the Same" by Echolyn. The song is about the loss of a loved one and what grief feels like. I have a hard time listening to that song without getting emotional. Though I've never experienced grief, I can sympathize with the lyrics.