It has always seemed like lyrics are perhaps the most subjective component of pop music (if indeed there are any less-subjective parts, or completely objective parts). I knew a girl a few years ago who insisted the ONLY good lyrics she had EVER heard in a rock song were by Broken Social Scene. More recently, I've heard people both rave and rant over "Neon Bible"'s lyrics.

What makes lyrics good or bad for you? There is of course pure crap, and pure genious, but for all the stuff that falls in between, what catches your eye? Is it witticisms and clever turns of of phrase? Is it vivid imagery and emotional connection? Is it narrative and the ability to tell a compelling story? Is it all relative to the artist?

I'll begin by saying that bands that deal exclusively in boy-girl trauma almost always turn me off, regardless of the quality of the lyrics. I tend to place a lot of emphasis on variety in subject matter. I also tend to get annoyed at lyrics that seem overly self-aware in their wittiness or literate-ness (e.g. The Mountain Goats).

I've always felt like Isaac Brock writes some of the finest modern pop lyrics. Great imagery, just enough clever turns of phrase, huge variety in subject matter, evokes a unique mood, equal parts whimsy and dread.

Good lyrics:


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Bad lyrics:

"Can I lift my dress up for you?
Can I lift it in the night?
White undersides of my thighs look much better
In the dark light

There’s a kid in there
And he’s big, and dumb,
And he’s… kinda scared
Well, he’s too old to be there

And he’s just looking for a light."

Montana needs to find new examples of bad lyrics.

Totally on board with the Brock thing. I think he's consistently amazing and inspiring. I really like lyrics that can 'get all philosophical' without feeling overbearing or like they're reaching beyond their grasp. Lyrics that provide genuine insight into all the questions that we'll never answer (oh you know... love and life and all that good stuff) are always surprising (because every artist in every medium attempts this in some way and it rarely turns out well).

I think Avey Tare of Animal Collective and Joanna Newsom (yeah, yeah) have some of the best on-paper lyrics in this regard.

I can also just get behind straight-up clever humor and wordplay. Stuff that makes you wish you were that creative with language - MF Doom sticks out as a good example.

And then there's good imagery - either cryptic or visceral - that creates a visual response as much as an aural one. I love closing my eyes and turning Dan Bejar's or Stephen Malkmus' words into mental pictures. Or Biggie's picture-perfect accounts of what, you know, "street life" is like leave lasting visual impressions.

What doesn't work are usually people who reach for ^^^ and fall noticeably short. I don't mind lyrics that are occasionally nonsensical (a lot of Carl Newman's solo/pornographers stuff is, by his own admission, just an effort to get all the right consonant and vowel sounds along with the music) or that don't make any effort to reach beyond what they're capable of (Dude Ranch/Enema blink-182 anyone?).

No matter what you get behind (or don't), there are always exceptions. You hate relationship lyrics right? So do I, but I'll be goddamned if the lyrics on This Year's Model aren't some of the finest ever crafted.

One thing to say: lyrics aren't poetry. They should never be divorced from the music and examined on their own. Case in point, MT: Krug's saccharine lyrics fucking work in "Stadiums and Shrines II." The delivery, the pathos - it's spot-on for the song. On the page, they're laughable, but we'll never encounter them - outside of pedantic wankerism - on the page, divorced from the music. Fast forward one minute and you have one of the more glorious lyrical moments from last year: "I'm sorry anybody dies at all these days."

What works lyrically, for me, are lyrics apropos of the song. I don't care what the lyrics are about - VD in the case of Ween or religion and death in the case of Arcade Fire - so long as they work w/ the music as performed.

I love the fucked up weird storytelling kind of lyrics á lá Cedric Bixler-Zavala.

Especially applicable to the IRS years of R.E.M.

Just like great poety, the best lyrics for me draw from the personal experience of the author.

But, you always have to remember that the lyrics must be dissected with the context of the song. While many lyrics seem pedestrian while reading, they can have huge power in the context of the song. And, the opposite can happen. Take the Grateful Dead for instance. The lyrics are cool in the songs, but almost breathtaking on a cold read outside of the context of the music. I would say Pink Floyd is the opposite. In the song: the words are very heavy, profound, meaningful: but, on a cold read: they can seem petty and almost juvenile, at times.

well, I don't hate all relationship songs...only bands who milk the subject matter too often.


But I'm not sure I quite get what alot of you are saying, that there is a difference between lyrics on the page and in the music. I mean, if you have a set of lyrics that ONLY work in the song, isn't that more the product of how they're sung (melody, harmony, pronunciation, etc.) or how they interlock with the music (syncopation, rhythm, texture, etc.)? Metal bands are good examples of this. Take Iron Maiden "Hallowed be they Name"...brilliant song, excellent melody and rhythm with the music, but the lyrics (like most Maiden lyrics) are silly fantasy filled with tired or cliched imagery. Dickinson's delivery is still golden, though...he could be singing twinkle, twinkle little star and it would still sound just as foreboding and angsty as ever.

No, you got my point exactly. Where do you encounter lyrics? Ok, maybe in the liner notes, but where you really get face to face with them is in the song. If they work perfectly in the song - and when Dickinson sings, "When the priest comes to read me the last the rights..." they do work perfectly - then what is the point of quibbling over the lyrics? If they work perfectly in the song, via the singer's delivery, the general way they play with the melody and tone, and the images the music, as a whole, conjures, then they're plenty good enough for me.

Now, if we get something brilliant & profound, that's just an added bonus.

this calls to mind something in every pulp album: Please do not read the lyrics whilst listening to the recording.

and the explanation:

probably time and place.

the only lyricists that ever really did a lot for me were Dylan, Townshend, Waters, Peart and Costello. not every song, mind you.

i love them because i was anywhere from 16 to about 24 years old, and they helped me through those times.

nothing post "Desire," "Quadrophenia," "The Wall," ever did much for me. Peart's and Costello's lyrics are still pretty decent, but i've begun a long descent into lyrics not meaning a whole hell of a lot for me.

Robert Pollard has great lines every now and then. but i'm not really into lyrics anymore.

The three best lyricists in rock history.

I don't like the rehash of the same old story. This is why mainstream pop music and country music in general SUCK to the n'th degree.

I like lyrics that are thick with metaphors to the point that you either get exactly what the writer meant, or you find your own meaning in them.

Good lyrics take you on a journey. They reveal things you might not know otherwise, and if it's a glimpse into the life of someone else, that's a plus. But it has to be honest. Chris Carabba won the hearts of all the teens and tweens who'd never heard someone sing a song about a broken heart before, or about any of the other female related emotions he sings about. But to anyone else, it's been done before, it's boring, it's calculated, and it's likely connected to $$$.

Then you have that Bright Eyes guy, who has perhaps the worst, most forced voice in the last 10 years. I can't stand his music at all. I actually gave it a good listen a couple years ago to see what it was about, after reading so many things comparing him to Dylan and such. It was barely storytelling - just a mish-mash of random thoughts that reeked of trying to describe experiences that plenty of people have had in life. Maybe back in Dylan's early days moving from the country to NYC was truly something to expand on and romantacize on because it was a unique event to a person that had perhaps not been portrayed in music or art.

Too much these days is dumbed up or dumbed down to give it some kind of a spin, to make it unique. I can't stand either of those guys above and the less I hear of them, the better I feel.

Yeah, generally lyrics don't matter to me at all. If they're good, it's a bonus. Very occasionally, I'll find some lyrics really grating (I think the last example that jumped out at me was that Brett Anderson / Bernard Butler album from a couple of years back) but most of the time I couldn't care less what they're singing about.

The most offensive is the Nasvhille coffee shop cooked up "lesson" or "twist" songs that are applied to every single Nu-Country album released these days. See Kenny Rogers "the Greatest " song as a perfect example:


"Little Boy, in a baseball hat
Stands in the field with his ball and bat
Says I am the greatest player of them all
Puts his bat on his shoulder and he tosses up his ball

And the ball goes up and the ball comes down
Swings his bat all the way around
The world's so still you can hear the sound
The baseball falls to the ground

Now the little boy doesn't say a word
Picks up his ball, he is undeterred
Says I am the greatest there has ever been
And he grits his teeth and he tries it again

And the ball goes up and the ball comes down
Swings his bat all the way around
The world's so still you can hear the sound
The baseball falls to the ground

He makes no excuses, He shows no fears
He just closes his eyes and listens to the cheers

Little boy, he adjusts his hat
Picks up his ball, stares at his bat
Says I am the greatest the game is on the line
And he gives his all one last time

And the ball goes up like the moon so bright
Swings his bat with all his might
And the world's so still as still can be
And the baseball falls, and that's strike three

Now it's supper time and his mama calls
Little boy starts home with his bat and ball
Says I am the greatest that is a fact
But even I didn't know I could pitch like that"

I don't think there any cut-and-dry rules for lyrics. There are really clever, well-written lyrics by people like Costello, Cocker, Dylan, etc. There are extremely straightforward lyrics that work because of their simplicity and because of the delivery and the music that goes along with it. On paper, "I don't wanna bore you with it, oh but I love you, I love you, I love you" is pretty cheesy. But when Stevie Wonder is singing that line and he drags that third "I loooooove you", it means something. Smokey Robinson is the perfect example of a guy who never got too clever with lyrics, yet managed to steer just short of enough cliches and deliver great vocals and melodies that enhanced them. Delivery, music, the way it's sung = it all matters. You can twist a cliche or give it extraordinary meaning sometimes. And sometimes you can't.

As far as recent lyrics go - I think Craig Finn and Dan Bejar are great lyricists. Bright Eyes is okay, but I think he's pretty overrated as a lyricist. Sometimes he's good, sometimes he comes off as trying too hard to be clever or as someone already said "cramming a bunch of random thoughts" into a song. Isaac Brock is fantastic and extremely underrated. He's so good that people don't notice how good he is. It's sort of easy to get people talking about your lyrics when there's a lot of them, when you have really wordy songs or songs that tell stories. He doesn't really do any of that, but he paints some pretty ugly pictures and some ugly, pretty pictures with his words.

I tend to drift in and out of focus while listening to lyrics, so I like anything that I can tune into, and get a snappy two-three line block that has some clever wordplay/humor/raw emotion/whatever.

Then of course there, are vocal/lyric based bands that mix the words real high in the tapes, and are minimal in the backing music that force you to engage and listen for the story they're trying to tell. It's night and day with a band that is trying to sweep you up in the music, and one that's telling a story. The song that comes to mind right now is Nobody Home off The Wall. Piano, Waters, images.

I think anyone/band that expects people to listen with a lyrics sheet open is out of their mind.

Althought I wouldn't consider them "good" lyrics, I must say the Chicago rapper Vakill has some ridiculously funny lines...I feel like I need to post a few.

(PS...these send drunk/high people at parties into hysterics...I suggest you try it!)


"Never dropped from a label/my career is stable/I brought my rap game to a fat bitch at a diner/and I brought a lot to the table"

"I'm a beast in bed/you better check my dick-head for three sixes"

"My game is growing like its testicular/you might need chemo/y'all niggers emo?/and I'm deep-pussy diving 'til I'm finding Nemo"

Ok, the last one kind of doesn't make sense (although I'm doing these from memory, so I might have missed a rhyme), but you have to love the association...

Yeah, people who are smart enough to make incredibly compelling music are generally smart enough to write lyrics that aren't embarassingly horrible. That shit is just for decoration anyway, serving the music in whatever way, and making it appear to be the most appropriate way to do it. Except for awesome punk rock where the songs are all about suckin' cock (G.G. Allin, the Dwarves) or funny shit like Ween or the Frogs. Other than that, lyrics generally don't grab my attention and affect me in gloriously heavy ways, with a few exceptions like Jens Lekman, Thin Lizzy, Silver Jews, Flipper, Albini stuff, Neil Young, etc.

I know exactly what I like. I absolutely have to find a part of myself in lyrics (male or female) or I'm disinterested. I guess you could call me a vain listener. I like desperate/ empowering references to God and desire (PJ Harvey), lonely dreamy Americana lyrics (Neko Case), and powerful one-liners over a hypnotic beat (Ellen Allien ex. "I feel like taking a life.").

Turn- offs: Weak female meandering, lazy stoner lyrics, shit about trees

I hate when a singer puts a big delivery into going for the one self-consciously 'clever' quotable line, but it falls so short of meaning anything that it's cringeworthy. You'll find this a lot with bands like Cursive and whatnot (ie. "your tears are only alibis!").

but yeah, stupid lyrics can be great sometimes. Ian Svenonious screaming "my t-shirt shows everything!" in the middle of a loud punk song is unparalleled.

^otm, obvious quoteable lines

Oh yeah, Nic, thanks for a good discussion thread.

When I was in college the teacher was old. But, you could tell she was saucy ass hot when she was kicking it back in the day. I mean, she was fucked up from smoking, but I might have banged her for the hell of it if she asked me even then. That's besides the point.

First day in her poetry class. She passes out Springsteen's Born to Run. We analyzed it as poetry and it stood up. It was awesome. Not only did I realize the greatness of Bruce, but I realized that the strength of these lyrics was far from being a norm in music.

I made the statement earlier that lyrics out of context of music really change, and somebody in the thread said that lyrics should never be seen out of the context of the music, but I'd argue:

truly great lyrics can stand on paper visually, or through the auditory experience. Like Hunter, Peart, Dylan, Waters, etc.

I pose the argument that lyrics that can stand alone are not as great as ones that can't.

Red Barchetta is a cool song lyrically.

I'm tired.

De nada.

I will add that in the past 2 years or so I've really been drawn to lyrics that have a lot of quiet desperation to them...I guess the best way to explain would be through two examples.

"I See A Darkness" (drawn to the Bonnie Prince Billy version first, still probably prefer it)

[FIRST VERSE:]
Well, you're my friend
And can you see
Many times we've been out drinking
Many times we've shared our thoughts
Did you ever, ever notice, the kind of thoughts I got
Well you know I have a love, for everyone I know
And you know I have a drive, for life I won't let go
But sometimes this opposition, comes rising up in me
This terrible imposition, comes blacking through my mind

[CHORUS:]
And then I see a darkness
Oh no, I see a darkness
Do you know how much I love you
Cause I'm hoping some day soon
You'll save me from this darkness

[SECOND VERSE:]
Well I hope that someday soon
We'll find peace in our lives
Together or apart
Alone or with our wives
And we can stop our whoring
And draw the smiles inside
And light it up forever
And never go to sleep
My best unbeaten brother
That isn't all I see

[CHORUS:]
And then I see a darkness
Oh no, I see a darkness
Do you know how much I love you
Cause I'm hoping some day soon
You'll save me from this darkness

And

"The Upper Peninsula" Sufjan Stevens

I live in America
With a pair of Payless shoes
The upper penisula
And the television news
And I've seen my wife
At the K-Mart
In strange ideas
We live apart

I live in a trailer home
With a snow mobile, my car
The window is broken out
And the interstate is far
I drove all night
To find my child
In strange ideas
He's been revived

In strange ideas
In stranger times
I've no idea
What's right sometimes
I lost my mind
I lost my life
I lost my job
I lost my wife

I think a lot of people are kind of "done" with their Sufjan-gasms, but I still feel like he represents that intangible, midwest angst and/or quiet stoicism. I have friends from Michigan who maintain that this song perfectly represents how their state feels (in dark times, of course).

SIMPLICITY to a great extent. The great thing about music is that the music negates the need for expressive literary devices, and you can say things that are too simple to exist without music. It's not a poem, it's music. Dylan was a poet, sure, but he still worked with a certain economy of words and in the American folk tradition that his words fit well with the music. This is the reason I cannot stand the Mountain Goats.

This ties in with my other pet peeve: lyricists who take lyrics too seriously. Some of the most poignant songs (just like movies and books I think) are those that are infused with a little sophisticated humor.

Basically, popular musicians (term used loosely to describe anyone not playing Beethoven or jazz) will never convince me that popular music is high art, and anyone who tries to with their lyrics is going to get the Feisty axe. I don't see it as complete fluff, rather lying somewhere in between art and entertainment, but when I hear a song I'm looking for a certain lack of heaviness and what the singer says or doesn't say is crucial.

Yes, yes, and yes...AND he has great delivery. And did I mention yes.

(and in case a few of you haven't checked this out)

Why is Tom Waits so cool?

Lyrics just gotta show me that someone's paying attention. The styles and approaches can be as varied as the musical genres, just keep it off auto-pilot.

Worst offenders:

-overly fake, cliched, romanticized bullshit (i.e. "Your Body is a Wonderland", any of that post-Duncan Sheik singer/songwriter crowd with the lovey-dovey lyrics that are supposedly written to get those guys laid, but that wouldn't convince any halfway decent, cool, hot girl in her right mind to have sex with them)

-people who think they're writing clever lyrics, when they aren't (i.e. Alanis Morrissette sometimes, Jason Mraz always, Bright Eyes (though I like the guy) at certain points, that fucking Shawn Mullins song with the "It's kinda like Nashville....WITH A TAN" line, etc)

-someone trying to go for shock value or sound cooler/harder than they are. Alanis is a culprit again. The most annoying part of that god-awful James Blunt song is the part where he talks about being "fucking high" because it proves that he knows that he's written a pussy song and it's like he tosses that in there to give him some form of cred or cool to keep the song from being completely pansified.

-black and white, dumb political statements I don't mind vague political statements or even direct ones if they're done a certain way. But, sloganeering stuff is just embarrassing. There's a System of a Down song from "Steal This Album", where Serj yells a bunch of crap like "MANUFACTURING CONSENT IS THE NAME OF THE GAME!" and it just makes me laugh and think "ooooooh, you've read Noam Chomsky! Whatchu want, a cookie?"

yeah, i hate bullshit placeholders like "i wanna tell you" or "i just gotta say"


lazy, thoughtless writing.

I usually like lyrics I can relate to. Don't have to be overly clever, because the delivery is important. Oasis's "Slide Away" is a good example--decent lyrics on their own but incredible when Liam sings them.

Lyrics are a piece of the package which makes up the song. Sometimes they need to be interesting, sometimes they have to sound cool, sometimes they need to be heartfelt, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes they tell a story, sometimes they just don't matter, but they are an integral part of most good songs, whether or not they make good reading outside the context of the song.

I don't really care if I can "relate" to them, I'm more concerned with whether or not they can serve to create a more intoxicating mood.

The crazy, obtuse lyrics of Mission Control by Burning Airlines are what make it so enveloping, and more effective, affective and full.

I keep hoping this thread will die so I don't have to read the horribly written topic line. What makes lyrics bad for you?? Trans-fats!

So I'm on a pretty unshakable Neil Young binge lately... just one of those things that has to happen from time to time.

One of the few artists where I listen to/remember all the lyrics without consciously listening to the lyrics. Not sure if that makes sense, but he somehow incorporates the lyrics perfectly within the music so that they're impossible to miss, even with all the bangin' guitar work going on.

"Oh yeah..."
"I don't know, but..." (unless you are a blues singer)