Posted in: Musicouching by Maria Donahoe on May 18th, 2012 | 0 Comments
Go back a decade or two or three, and you have some really great music with genius lyrics… Then go to today, where the number one on the charts is some unstructured rap about trivial things? What’s up with thtat?
I’ll be the first to admit I swear that I’ll never like a song, then find myself downloading it. Not because of the lyrics, but because of the catchy beat that decides to make it’s home in my head–and it won’t leave. But the real question is, how is this music so successful? I mean, compare it to a good song from a decade or two ago and the infectious beat walks off in shame.
You just can’t compare songs that can’t go one second without saying “Mother bleep ing haters bleep bleep what the bleep this is bleep some silly thrown together words bleep” with songs that have depth and lyrics that tell a story and make sense. And a lot of these raps don’t even have a great tune to get you suckered in. There’s just no way that the rather uncreative lyrics of quite a few new songs today can compete with songs from what seems like forever ago.
Hold up a song with lyrics like: “Drop it to the floor, make that ass shake, Whoa, make the ground move, that’s an ass quake, Built a house up on it, that’s an ass state
Roll my blunt on it, that’s an ass tray, Say Ye, say Ye, don’t we do this every day-day?
I work them long nights, long nights to get a pay day” (Kanye West, Mercy) Next to this: ”And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be, for though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see, there will be an answer, let it be.” (Let It Be, The Beatles.) The first group of lyrics have no real meaning, while the others have been proven to speak to people, to have deep meaning to them. Even if the second didn’t speak to you, aren’t they more, what’s the word, sophisticated than the song that just rambles about “ass”?
Oh, there’s no bias here. It’s just the facts: some lyrics have more meaning that just swearing and blathering on. So why on earth are the bits and pieces of ramble dominating the music charts while many great songs are sitting in the corner, like the good child we all know who never gets recognized?
(Of course, that one part of me that lets opinions take over wrote this: Come on people? Minaj v. Mercury? Really?)
