Words Suck

[Champion_Standing]

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[Ennewi]

Okay I'll bite...

While it can be argued that most lyrical songs stole from or were heavily influenced by literature, the same songs likely introduced a lot of non-readers to the work and pulled it out of obscurity. Literature is just the uglier older sister of music, great personality, no sex appeal. You can't read while doing something else, except maybe running on a treadmill but no one is going to read 1984 at the gym.

Reading is an individual activity and when given the choice most people would probably choose experience something exciting together, even vicariously. Much like sports, movies and songs provide that whereas books don't... unless it's an audiobook, but no one listens to those together unless they're stuck in the car with each other on a 8-hour drive to see the relatives or something.

Sometimes music is what makes the ideas behind the written word palatable. Songs with lyrics are just a hybrid of the two. A compromise, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But when you go to the grocery store usually there's lyrical music playing in the background, not classical music that puts most people to sleep and not some clerk reading Kafka over the intercom. Lyrics make overactive people think->feel, not just feel->think (like with the first link you posted). Because eventually, after mouthing the lyrics to themselves over and over, one day the subterfuge hits them and they realize Sledgehammer is about fucking or possibly drug use. Books can't do that. Instrumentals don't have to.

Without words there wouldn't have been censorship. And without censorship we wouldn't have had as many creative types finding creative ways around the censor. That spreads into other areas like comedy. Bill Hicks is a good example to use here because Arizona Bay incorporated instrumental music in between standup routines.

Also song lyrics aren't always dependent on the instruments, sometimes the vocals / words themselves are inextricable from the piece of music. An example being repetitive lyrics which aren't a feature unique to the blues genre, but they are in the way that repetition is employed. John Lee.

Another thing... Books written in foreign languages are dependent on the skill and discretion of the translator(s), which could change the entire meaning of a paragraph with one inaccurate word. Songs don't have to be translated to be appreciated or understood, even if they have lyrics. This does and doesn't support the idea that words suck or aren't necessary in music. Not having even the fundamentals of French down doesn't at all take away from the power of this song by Jacques Brel. In fact, without words it would kind of suck.

Over the years there have also been many many instrumental covers of lyrical songs. Monty Alexander released an entire album of Bob Marley covers, no lyrics, all jazz. Brad Mehldau has done the same with a lot of pop songs. But reverse hasn't been done. Afaik never has a classical or instrumental song been adapted, given lyrics and vocals and put on the radio. It doesn't translate well, just like books written in a foreign language.

TLDR

Classical music = healer. Literature = tank. Songs with lyrics = hybrids.
Your post = pally hate.

[quido]

Originally Posted by Rathnir [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And just cause I'm feeding the troll anyway: You care for Liquid Tension Experiment or Dream Theater? They have some pretty intense non-lyrical music, not sure if it's your genre tho. Wouldn't argue that it holds a candle to a lot of classical stuff, but it has intricate, maybe even interesting, modern guitar.

Never listened to LTE but Dream Theater can be alright. I hate that stupid ass singer, but Petrucci + Portnoy = A+

[quido]

Originally Posted by Bardalicious [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All that I've learned from this thread is that since taking a break from collecting pixels in elf sim land, OP has resorted to attempting to portray himself as intelligent on forums for people that collect pixels in elf sim land.

Grats man, you're clearly making profound personal gains since leaving p99 behind.

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u mad u dum and i call u dum?

you should come see my beautiful server I've been working on while forumquesting =)

[radditsu]

Can I cum?

[Ahldagor]

Originally Posted by quido [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Listen to most songs without the actual music and you'll be saying to yourself "what the fuck am I doing?" Most songs would be a pathetic excuse for poetry. Poetry has been mostly a fad for the last 400 years anyways, not to say there's not some good stuff. My favorite poem is "La Belle Dame sans Merci." I only like it because of the brief story and the message it carries - reading it is honestly painful, and I think a real story would better serve the cause of its creation. Nontheless, I do enjoy some poetry! I have no issue with poetry itself, but to say most songs are just poetry with a melody is wrong. They're half-rate poetry put to half-rate music and the writers are usually hoping you're too stupid to realize that the individual constituents are crap. For some reason putting them together fools people into believing it's quality.

I'd still enjoy Journey - Don't Stop Believin' 99.999% as much if every syllable was "blah." If people could get over their inhibitions about what's cool, I think they would find that they could too!

song lyrics r dum

so you like the keats poem where a man seduces a naked child (she's 14), kidnaps her, and promises marriage based upon a superstitious ritual that she did in order to find her true love.

[quido]

Originally Posted by Ahldagor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

so you like the keats poem where a man seduces a naked child (she's 14), kidnaps her, and promises marriage based upon a superstitious ritual that she did in order to find her true love.

not sure where this is coming from - is this what happened in the poem it's based on?

the poem I speak of tells a terse tale of a destroyer of men

[Azure]

Can we get a car analogy for the percentage of lyrics that sux... like there's only 1 car in the world, a good song is like a Ferrari, the rest are like dodge neons?

[Ahldagor]

this is better than 90% of contemporary music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg9KQ610biU

and Keats' is good but Hirsch is better.

[Ahldagor]

Originally Posted by quido [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

not sure where this is coming from - is this what happened in the poem it's based on?

the poem I speak of tells a terse tale of a destroyer of men

where's my mind. that was the eve of st. agnes. keats' piece of shit works always stumble me because they're cocks are sucked by formalist critics.

try the faerie queen by spenser you might like. he wrote it while destroying ireland.