ClumsyMonkey.net

Rufus Wainwright wrote:"the entire Gravity album"

Rufus Wainwright wrote:"Oh I, I have been good, I understood"

"Are you there? Is it wonderful?"

"Do you worry that you're not liked?"

"Has anybody wasted tears on loneliness that everyone becomes?"

"Oh life is waiting for you"

What's wrong with those lyrics?

His point is that, taken out of context, any lyric can sound stupid and simple.

The lyrics I quoted are from songs well known enough that a person who enjoys 80's music will recognize them and the song they're from, and the songs they're from are rather iffy. Particularly "Pour some sugar on me," and "Hot for teacher." I mean seriously.

I thought that posting entire songs when one line would do the job would be rather pointless. I was actually being nice by not asking someone to scroll through several pages of text to get to a point.

PS: Awww, poor alan, didums get ums feeling hurt in the other thread? Awww.

Keep it civil, folks.

what kind of vomit are we talkin here? chunky or smooth?

No, I didn't get my feelings hurt in the other thread buddy. I am just saying posting one line to a song isn't representative of an entire song. One line will always sound bad, that's just how it goes.

I am damn sure some of the music you like isn't exactly musical gold, to say the least. I mean, you're an OLP fan, so you have to like at least 10 songs of pure bad with drums.

You pick out a couple of songs that you don't think are lyrical masterpieces, that doesn't prove a point. Like I said, tell me the bands that you like, and I can pick out a whole slew of songs that suck lyrically. Unless you listen to Bob Dylan exclusively, you probably listen to crap.

End of story.

alan makes a point

You're still missing the point.

The music from 10, 20, 30, however long ago that hangs around today does so for a reason. It had some kind of quality to it that eludes time and still resonates, even across the years and the (constantly growing) generation gap. It is the melodys and lyrics that set forth what good music is. But Simon and Garfunkle, Elton John, John Denver and the like weren't the only artists around 30 years ago. There had to be something to fill in the gaps between their records, some crappy, derivative filler that paid the bills.

Today, we hear the derivative crappy filler. Time hasn't filtered out the shit yet. So to say that music has taken a dive based off what was made and what's being made now is a lie. We are comparing the best music of the past with everything, including all the crap, today.

When andrea said that the music of the 80's just had that mysterious something that made it all just great, well that's just not true, as a lot of those songs point out. Yes, there was some great stuff released, there was also a lot of shit.

Nowhere did I claim that all the music I listen to is pure enlightenment encapsulated in verse or that I only listen to songs that speak to the undying beauty that is the human spirit. Shit, I have Tom Jones and J-Pop in my playlist right now (although it is Tom Jones featuring Portishead, doing a cover of a Louie Armstrong song, which I like to think earns me extra points).

My point was that for every great song you can point out, there were at LEAST 10 that were mediocre, and about 20 that just sucked. But in 20 years, some one is going to be listening to some godawful music on the radio, and claim that good music died in the beginning of the century because time stripped away the OTowns, the Puddle of Mudds, the Limp Bizkets, and left only the White Stripes, the Rufus Wainwrights, and the Pete Yorns (well, mostly his first album, but he's young), just as time has already stripped away a lot of the crap from the 70's and even the 80's and 90's.

What I'm saying is: Quality tends to endure. Saying that the average song today isn't as good as the greatest songs of yesterday is a very obvious statement. The question we should be concerned with is how do the best songs of today stack up against the best of yesterday? And if we're talking about the White Stripes and Rufus Wainrights of the world, then we're in pretty damn good shape.

I agree. I bet you didn't think I'd say that, eh fucker?

Anyways, when you think about it, the greatest songs of our generation seem rather weak. Think about it, go ahead and pick out the greatest songs in your opinion that we've had come out in the past 10 years, and it still seems to pale in comparison to the past. Thats's just how it's going to be.

Those standout artists you speak of that we have yet to discover sure don't look like they're coming out of the woodwork. The only bands that I can think of that will be the Led Zepplins or The Whos of our generation are The White Stripes (maybe) and Radiohead. Bands like OLP, no matter how good we think they are now, won't be considered among the greatest. There just aren't enough artists out there that expand music both musically and lyrically. We have Bright Eyes kicking ass lyrically, but the music is boring, simplistic, and something I can easily duplicate, not to mention Condor is trying to stay away from fame. Musically, The Darkness can blow you away, but give me a fucking break, in the sense of a legendary band, they blow.

I just want to see what bands we'll reminisce about gingerly in the future, because when you think about it, each generation had its big trend. The 60s, 70s, and 80s, had one trend, or two at the most for the entire decade. The 90s had hair metal, grunge, mellowed out rock, gangster rap, girl groups, and boy bands. That's a whole hell of a lot more than one or two major trends. Music is too trendy nowadays, and we're not going to be able to specifically pick out rock bands to speak for us, because the record company dollars follow trends. So when the punk/emo craze dies, and goes into mellow indie-esque rock, then into a huge R&B phase, then into ghetto rap again, then into who knows what, deserving bands will always get ignored. If the White Stripes were to have come out with White Blood Cells at the end of 2004, no one would have noticed except for hardcore scenesters. They just hit at the right time. Radiohead hit at the right time, multiple times. That's just how it is.

There's a definate sense of timing in any music that hits big. Had there not been some kind of war going on for DECADES (the first US soldier to die in Vietnam was in 1945), folk music and it's peaceful message never would have caught on as well as it did, bolstered by a people who were just tired of the fighting. The Beatles were huge because that sound was ready to hit, and they were the ones to hit it.

It really comes down to a problem of hindsight being 20/20. Looking back, it's plain as day to see how all these strands of society, culture and music came together in one sound or even one band and they redefined the playing field forever. But if we look back to the early 90's, no one could have seen Gansta Rap or Grunge emerging from the hair band/milli vanilli/new kids ass-music that was being produced. But economic troubles, the emergence of rap as a legitimate musical style along with the increased acceptance of blacks in popular culture (yes, I am claiming that the Cosby show is somehow responsible for Tupac), and the musical void left by the bland, depthless music that had just been the big thing all hit at once and we got two of the most notable and, well, GOOD musical styles in over a decade.

Again, looking back, it's clear as day, and we could probably swing a whole thread out of the topic, and a rather long one at that. But who on earth could have guessed it was coming before it hit?

Same thing's going on here. The media keeps blabbering about "the next big thing" (See, The Strokes, The Hives, emo, mall-punk, et al) while not understanding the basics of the situation. The best, the absolute best music isn't just a song with nice lyrics and well put together melodies. The best music is what we get when all these disparate threads of culture and society manage to come together and define, and then are defined by, a "sound." Like Folk, with Simon and Garfunkle, or early Elton John, Carly Simon, Carole King, John Taylor, and their peers. Or grunge with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, STP, Smashing Pumpkins, and theirs. The best music happens when the music fits the times.

Ironically, what defines the acts typically leads to dismantling them. They acts, after they have defined their music, end up being defined by their music. Unable to change to reflect the changing times, they traditionally fade away. Very, VERY few are the acts that manage to redefine themselves along with the time. Madonna did it for a while, but even she's fallen by the wayside.

Elton John has managed to do a pretty good job of it, mostly by acknowledging his fall from fame ("This Train don't Stop) in his work, and remembering to define his music, and not the other way around (although even still, what he was is so much remembered that what he is will probably never hit that peak again). Johnny Cash did it by his nails, only by taking who he was and finding a song that fit him so perfectly that I kinda consider the song more his than NIN's at this point.


In closing, a bit of history. In the early 50's, most of those groups like the Supremes and Temptations were assembled by businessmen who saw a way to make money. They were given songs they didn't write and being photogeneic was more important than being musical. Then things changed, and we got some good music. Then came the 80's, with Milli Vanilli, NKotB, and their ilk, being assembled for looks, and then came more good music, and so on. There was always something good going on in the background, but it rarely came to the top until those musical movements really hit.

Just because we're in a lull now dosen't mean we won't break out of it. Nor does it mean that we should just cash in our cd's for beer money. It just means we have to look a bit for the good stuff, and we get to hear about the next big thing first. Then we get to be snobs about knowing about it before everyone else. Which is fun.


Fucker.

Robin: Holy big ass fucking posts Batman!