I've been thinking about the musical choices that bands/musicians/record producers make when mixing a track, and realized that there is whole subgenre of music that could be defined by the complete unintelligibility of the lyrics. Whether the choice to distort or smear over the lyrics was made to heighten the caché of the music (possible examples = My Bloody Valentine, New Order) or to cover up really stupid writing (see My Bloody Valentine, New Order) it can grant an instant point of discussion and, my thesis, make the listening experience even more enjoyable. As someone whose enjoyment of REM is in inverse proportion to the intelligibility of their lyrics, I would tenderly propose that some songs are made better by the obfuscation of the words. Some examples for me include Cocteau Twins, Les Georges Leningrad, later Talk Talk, Liquid Liquid, some Deerhunter, and plenty on the 4AD label. And yours? Think of it as musical Mumblecore.

Little red fly.

Townswoman ladymisskirroyale raised the following question for discussion on The Main Stage. We may have had a thread or two related to this topic long ago, but there's been lots of turnover since then, and lots of new Townspeople to add to the collective personal history of rock that is part of our mission. To that end, please do us one favor: keep your misheard lyrics personal, OK? Don't copy entries out of some "There's a Bathroom on the Right" book. Here's what ladymiss wants to see discussed:

I see a post that needs to be done of misheard lyrics. Shall we start one? One of my favorites: My brother thinking that Wings' "Live and Let Die" actually says, "Little Red Guy." Hmmm.

Totally unloaded questions here in that I'm not wedded in advance to getting one right answer, but I would indeed like to know three things:

1) Can you name any submissive love songs by men to women? Submissive here defined as: "You lead the way and are in control and I like it" or "I wish you were leading the way or in control because I would like it."

2) Can you name any submissive love songs by men to women that you actually like?

3) Can you name any submissive love songs by men to women that you like significantly, or mainly, because of the attitude expressed in the lyrics (as opposed to "great bass line," "very tuneful," etc.)?

Note: Explicit or implicit gay love songs are not the subject here because they're an entirely different set of dynamics. Judas Priest love songs have complicated submission/dominance dynamics, but they (mainly) just don't sound like songs from a man to a woman and so the issues at stake are different.

I think I can, I think I can...

You may recall a recent comment by E. Pluribus Gergely regarding his belief that the music and packaging of Led Zeppelin promise way more than the band can deliver lyrically:

...regarding Plant's ramblings, one can always count on a "you don't need to be a Dylan to make it work" defense. True, but the music behind the rambling is presented in such a majestic fashion that the listener is expecting some sort of wisdom, or at the very least something that makes some sort of sense period. All one ever gets is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

And that's my real beef with Zeppelin. No one expects any insights from on high when electric piano keys are pounded on the "Louie, Louie" intro because nothing overly complicated is going on in the first place.

This isn't a bad or untrue point, but the question this raised for me is, Has any band made anywhere near as majestic, bombastic music AND been able to support it with lyrics that aren't pretty stupid? I asked Plurbs to compare the lyrics of Led Zeppelin to those of Yes, Rush, Black Sabbath, and other bands working this territory. In comparison, Plant's lyrics don't sound half as bad, do they? But that's not my question - what I really want to know is, what band making majestic, bombastic, mountain-scaling music delivers lyrics that come close to delivering on the promise of the music? Is Pink Floyd the best rock can offer?

I believe it was in a recent issue of People magazine that I was reading at my Mom's house this weekend that I read about a recovering Alexa Ray Joel, the daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, who survived an sort of overdose of homeopathic pills and who has a recording career underway. I had no idea!

What really struck me in this piece, though, was some song with a quoted couplet that contained the word "healthy." I can't put my finger on it just yet, but the word "healthy" has no business appearing in a rock lyric. Do you agree? What other words have you heard or read in rock lyrics that simply don't belong in this genre?

A dime for your thoughts...

I was listening to "A Dime a Dozen," by Carla Thomas, the other day.

I love almost everything about this song. It’s pretty perfect, except for those lyrics, which are, as near as I can tell: “You’re so sweet, sweeter than apples, and just like an apple, nobody can sample.” There’s some other stuff in there that I can’t quite make out but it doesn’t sound promising.

I don’t need brilliant lyrics with every song. I’m fine with words that merely sound cool even if they don’t make much sense to me. I also don’t mind if they are just the simple lyrics of a more innocent era. My favorite song of all time is "Good Lovin’," by The Rascals, so I am by no means a lyrics snob. But "A Dime a Dozen" did make me start to wonder how bad the lyrics would have to be to make an otherwise cool song unlistenable.

So, what song do you think has the biggest gap between cool music and crappy lyrics?

Conversely, what song do you think has the biggest gap between crappy music and cool lyrics? (I’m guessing there has to be a Dylan song to fit this bill.)

Rock requires rhyming. Relinquishing rhyme requires retaining regular rhythm regardless.

Ok, I’ll stop.

My point is that any rule, such as the one stipulating that rock lyrics must use end-rhyme, can seem like a straitjacket, and it will lead you to write things you wouldn’t write if the rule were not there.

And it’s too easy to lean on examples you’ve heard before, which leads to hackneyed lyrics that are just there because you need to fill up the space with words if you want to sing rock music. It’s often been noted that English is not a great language for rhymes, compared to Romance languages, but that’s no excuse for laziness.

One of my least favorite rhymes is found you/around you. It usually takes the form of "I’m so happy that I’ve found you/I’ll build my world around you," but perhaps the most famous version of this rhyme is in The Foundations' song:

I’ve never liked this song, though I’ve got to admit that’s a pretty cool video. One of things I had problems with was the "now that I’ve found you/I can let you go" concept. Looking up the lyrics now, I see that it’s "I can’t let you go," and suddenly the whole song seems too much like a domestic abuse scenario.

Another rhyme I hate is change/rearrange.

In this case it’s made more annoying by the chaayaange/rearraayaange pronunciation. Changing the world is a tall order, especially for a scrawny English dude with such elementary skills on the piano.

We had a thread recently where we talked about the lazy lyricist who rhymed a word with itself. That's bad, but reaching into the grab bag of pre-existing obvious rhymes is just as bad.

What are some of your least favorite hackneyed rhymes?

My number one pet peeve regarding lyrics is when the songwriter “rhymes” a word with the same exact word.

Last night, I was listening to some Junior Brown and I heard the following couplet:

“One of us will have to give, or there’ll be nothing left to say,
So Darlin’ I’ll do anything you say”

Now, I really like Junior Brown but I have to call him out on this. Junior: It’s not a rhyme if it’s the same frigging word. Get a rhyming dictionary if you have to for chrissake, but rhyming “say” with “say” doesn’t count.

I’m looking for more examples of this egregiously lazy technique (or lack thereof).

Please ignore the artistic merits of lyrics and just focus on the “rhyme.”

I'm looking for songs that list the days of the week.

The lyrics don’t have to mention all of the days of the week (although that’s preferable), but they do have to list several days in succession. Lyrics that mention a few particular days as part of a narrative are not sufficient. I’ll also accept songs that list the months of the year.

I’ll start with "Friday On My Mind," by The Easybeats.

I may soon find that my premise was not worth bringing to the Halls of Rock for possible scintillating discussion, but that's the way it goes around here. Driving in this morning I was listening to a collection of obscure '60s psych recordings that came with the recent edition of Mojo with a Who Sell-Out article and Nick Lowe interview. While enjoying the songs for what they were, I got to thinking about whether any "psychedelic" lyrics ever made an impression on me if they didn't come from a band that had first established its lyrical cred through more traditional lyrics.

For instance, as a teenager I had no beefs with George Harrison's "The more one travels/The less one really knows" from The Beatles' B-side "The Inner Light," to show you how forgiving I could be. Same goes for a much better song, The Byrds' "Eight Miles High." Cool music, cool enough sentiments. To this day I dig the lyrics of these songs. I'd already liked my share of songs and lyrics by these artists, so perhaps, based on some form of the Sincerity Fallacy, it sounded like progress when they moved into psychedelic territory.

On the other hand a song like "Journey to the Center of Your Mind," cool as it is musically, never carried any weight with me musically. I don't know if it's because I didn't have any prior respect for the lyrical content of The Amboy Dukes, but I'm more than willing to consider that to be the case. If "Strawberry Fields Forever" was the first single by The Beatles would I have brushed off the lyrics as nonsense plucked from the Psych Pshoppe? I'm equally willing to admit that I may not know how it is that I assess psychedelic lyrics from any source.

One band that trafficked in psychedelic lyrics from the starting gate, when they were "nobodies," so to speak, and that hold up as well as any psych lyrics, in my mind, was Pink Floyd. Because I was not already a fan of later-day Floyd when I first heard the early stuff, I cannot say that they built up credibility after the fact. Those Syd Barrett lyrics actually sound original and inspired to me more often than not.

What are your experiences with psychedelic lyrics from artists who did not previously establish credibility as more conventional lyricists?