The Prog Mind

Lyrics and ideas in the songs have always been important to me. They enhance the listening experience. I often have trouble listening to a band if the lyrics are lousy/trite even if the music is decent.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: VERY important to me.  I like my music to actually mean something.  I can deal with crappy lyrics from time to time but trite themes annoy the heck out of me.  It's even more important to me in my own music. Lyrics (and music) should speak to a vital part of the human experience and tell part of the great story of life/history.  Even if I don't agree with the philosophies/messages behind a song's lyrics, I can still enjoy them.

I love a good lyrical message. It's not something I always found important, but as I get older, I find I'm more invested in the words and what story or mood they're trying to convey. Often a song that I regard as my favorite nowadays is based on the criteria of a strong lyrical message augmented by powerful, deep music that adds to the meaning without becoming a distraction.

A perfect example for me is A Louse is Not a Home by Peter Hammill. Lyrically and musically, it's one of the best songs I've ever heard. I'm moved by the poetry on such a deep level, and the images the text depicts is matched flawlessly by the musical gestures throughout.

I also have a similar preference for albums with strong, unified narratives, such as Opeth's Still Life and Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Two of my top 5 albums for this very reason.

The lyrics of bands and artists such as the Flower Kings, Magenta, Neal Morse, Unitopia, etc mean a lot to me, I find the blend of religious/spiritual elements, new age philosophies and vague enough suggestions on how to approach your life absolutely inspiring.

Other than that, one of the things I've always loved about prog is how cryptic, confusing, vague, subtle and complex the words often are. I love really giving them a lot of thought and working out what they might possibly mean. Sometimes even one line can really stand out and mean something of great importance to me.

To me, those sort of lyrics can be just as much a prog trademark as striking artwork and involving arrangements are!

Dean wrote: Aussie-Byrd-Brother wrote: Completely off topic, but damn, Dean, what a band Mansun were....I've still got a Mansun t-shirt somewhere, but I hardly ever wore it because people that didn't know them assumed that good looking bunch of young lads were a poppy boy group like Nsync etc lol! Anyway, thanks for throwing in such a random Mansun plug, and.... It wasn't random. Mansun were reknowned as being the "bedsit-philosophy" band of the 90s and the darlings of the student philosopher, just like Yes and Genesis were in the 70s and Marillion in the 80s. Fans would pour over the lyrics, analysing the words for meaning. Realising this would happen with the songs on the Attack Of The Grey Lantern album, Paul Drapper penned An Open Letter To A Lyrical Trainspotter as a hidden coda track to close the album, but to no avail, the bed-sit philosophers still picked over the lyrics. Which of course leads directly on to their Prog-Opus: Six, where they made a deliberate effort to show all the songs references in the cover art, including showing all the literature that inspired them in the book titles on the desk and the images in the background.

Guess what, Dean, I was one of those people that pored over those details too! I've got a massive framed poster of the `Six' album cover, and I remember when I was younger I used to stare at that thing all the time, along with my vinyl copy! Guilty....and loved every bit of it!

In my Prog world, lyrics have often come 'secondary' to the music.  I love Jon Anderson's lyrics, even if they are a bunch of kozmik and spiritual rambling, I love Peter Hammill's lyrics, more often than not, unique and intelligent.  At the same time, Todd Rundgren has a knack of writing from the heart.  Even some nonsensical lyrics I can overlook as long as the music behind it is well played.  Some lyrics are just plain dopey..........

Yeah, lyrics are important for me, but not more than the music.   I can enjoy a song with very good music and crappy lyrics, but there is no way I can really enjoy a song with excellent lyrics but crappy music (though I might come to admire said song for it's message or significance, but not really enjoy it).

As with any other performance art, I am interested mainly in expression in music.  So I look at lyrics too from the standpoint of expression, rather than the content.  I am not particularly interested in whether I agree or disagree with the content (and the content by itself has never influenced my way of life) but in whether I find the manner convincing and engaging.   I love how in the line "Plans that either come to nought or half a page of scribbled waste", Waters presents a reflection on Britain in a manner that could be interpreted and related to a personal situation as well.   On the other hand, while Neil Peart may make a good point at times, I don't like his lyrics because of the way he frames his thoughts (which comes across as somewhat banal and 'captain obvious' to me).

^ Then stories are just as much of human waste as philosophy. We have nothing to learn from them.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - May 17 2013 at 11:12