Garbage In; Garbage Out

It's rare, but things can be simple. Like, some kids grew up on lyrics like Neil Peart's words to the song "Grand Designs":

A to B --
Different degrees...
 So much style without substance
So much stuff without style
It's hard to recognize the real thing
It comes along once in a while
Like a rare and precious metal
Beneath a ton of rock
It takes some time and trouble
To separate from the stock
You sometimes have to listen to
A lot of useless talk
Shapes and forms
Against the norms -- 

....So much poison in power
The principles get left out
So much mind on the matter
The spirit gets forgotten about
Like a righteous inspiration
Overlooked in haste
Like a teardrop in the ocean
A diamond in the waste
Some world-views are spacious --
And some are merely spaced
Against the run of the mill
Static as it seems
We break the surface tension
With our wild kinetic dreams
Curves and lines --
Of grand designs... 

Other kids grow up with lyrics like those of today's country hits, like these, from Jason Aldean's in-depth philosophical treatise on Friday night throw-downs,"Light's Come On":

You’re a crack-of-dawn, Monday-morning (coffee strong)
Poured everything you got into a paycheck Friday night
You’re a plow with stroke diesel, backhoe-riding king of beers, 18-wheeler
(Driving, living life in between the lines)
Of clocking in and quitting time…
But then the six-string circus comes to town
We hang them speakers over the crowd
When the lights come on, everybody’s screaming
Lighters in the sky, yeah, everybody’s singing
Every word to every song to a girl to take it home tonight
When the lights come on, everybody’s feeling
A hallelujah high from the floor to the ceiling
Yeah, the drink that we’re drinking, the smoke that we’re smoking
The party we throw, it’s going all night long

I'll let you work out what the results are/could be. If you listen/listened to lyrics like the first example, you should be fine. If the second, feel free to email me for a handy list of interpretive guidelines.

Music: The Lyrical Steroid

How does the listening public hear certain song lyrics and not demand recompense for the time lost in listening to them?

Yesterday, Bryan Adams's old song, "Heaven," came on the radio. It came out when I was in high school. I think it was our prom song in '86. That lyric is a pile of cliches. That's all it is.

"Now, nothin' can take you away from me.
We've been down that road before
But that's over now.
You keep me comin' back for more."

It must have taken him about eight minutes to write. (But what more can you expect from a guy who would go on to write a song called "18 'Till I die"?)

"How can anyone allow this happen?" asks the lyricist in me. "How can you people listen to this?" asked the teenaged, progressive rock/classical-loving high school kid I was...

Well, I know how. And between you and me, I, too, have fallen prey to bad lyric songs: they're relatable, which is the stuff of a cliche, in the end. But the main reason this happens is that music kicks the proverbial butt of all other art forms. People can see lyrics as "good enough" because music is to lyrics what steroids are to a 40+ home run hitter; it can raise the most inane drivel into the realm of the sublime.

"Hmm... 'Poopsie, you are everything I need..'
No. 'Baby you're all that I need.' That's it!"

It's not that Bryan Adams is a master composer, by any stretch. It's that music is that powerful. Even a simplistic chord and song structure like the one in "Heaven" is impressive to the non-musician's ear. Float that mediocre music and brainless lyric out there to a hormonal sixteen-year-old who is convinced that the girl he met in chemistry class is worth dying for because she is a good kisser, and you are guaranteed success.

I can just see my classmates delving into each other's eyes on the dance floor...boys singing into the girls' faces ("Baby you're all that I need..." ) and the girls tearing up as if they had just been presented with a wax-sealed Shakespearean sonnet.