How important are lyrics to you?

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   inspired by a recent comment by Pedro elsewhere, I was thinking of how my attitude towards vocals and lyrics has changed over time.
When I was younger, while I have always enjoyed instrumental music, my preference was always for music with sung lyrics, and I only ever heard lyrics sung in English. Thus I was always able to understand the lyrics (well, almost always - some singers by virtue of their delivery and/or accent were rather unintelligible to me at times). I used to love to learn the lyrics to every song I listened to, so that I could sing along, if I wanted. I liked to think about what they meant, and if they weren’t obvious, to try and work out what they meant. Back in pre-Internet days, the meaning of lyrics was not easily discovered, so it was more of less working it out for oneself. I loved it when lyrics told a story, over a song, over a series of songs, or over a whole album.

But for years now, I’ve not cared at all about lyrics - which I recognise is potentially quite offensive, because I know how much thought and effort some composers put into their words. The reason is simple, though. I now listen to music from all around the world, and more often than not, in a language not English. I have no way of knowing what the lyrics are, so the vocals for me are now just one more instrument in the mix. But I have also often found this doesn’t make a difference to being able to follow a concept, or even knowing what a song might be about. The way a vocalist sings can imply a lot of meaning, without knowing what the words are.

It is the music, however, that I’ve found really tells the story on many an occasion. I have listened to several purely instrumental concept albums that tell the story better than many vocal concept albums. I think I’m at a point these days where I prefer either an instrumental album, or an album with foreign vocals, to one where the vocals are in English. This feeling is compounded by how often I struggle with a group because of the vocalist. I avoided Yes for years because I can’t stand Jon Anderson’s voice. The Yes albums with Jon I like, I like in spite of his vocals, and I would far rather Yes were an instrumental band. I love King Crimson’s Lizard, but Jon Anderson completely ruins the first part of the piece for me with his god-awful voice.

Likewise, for many years I just couldn’t get into any form of extreme metal with harsh vocals. Someone might play something, and I’d think it was ok until the vocals kicked in. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated extreme metal, but I certainly avoided it. However, I knew there was some really good music in there, if I could just open my ears. It was Opeth who were eventually my way into extreme metal. I still don’t like harsh vocals, but I can tolerate them - and I now have a good deal of extreme metal in my collection. But, again, it’s in spite of the vocals.

Pedro mentioned he thought he had about 20 different languages in his music collection, which inspired me to see what I have in mine. I’m sure to have missed some, because to come up with the list, I was simply flicking through my iPad. So not only would it have been easy to flick past an artist or band which has foreign language vocals, but if they’re not on my iPod, I won’t even have thought about them. There are also several bands that have their own made up language, but rather than list them separately, I’ve just combined them. That will probably upset some people, but hey - upsetting some people seems to be inevitable in any discussion on PA!

(Also, it should be noted that languages such as French, Portuguese and Spanish can be very different depending on where in the world they are spoken, so bear that in mind when you come across them. Similarly, there are about 12 “main” Indonesian languages, and something like 700 Indonesian languages overall. And I’ll be honest, I have no idea which of the Senegalese languages is being sung in my collection either, so apologies too for not being more accurate, there. My inclusion of Indonesian and Senegalese is probably, therefore, as offensive as when Pedro said he counted Welsh, Irish and Scottish as English. I can only apologise for my ignorance here. Sorry.)

Belarusian 
Catalan
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Faroese
Finnish
French
Georgian
German
Hebrew
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Invented languages 
Irish (aka as Irish Gaelic or Gaeilge)
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Mandarin
Māori 
Norwegian 
Polish
Portuguese 
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Sanskrit
Sardinian
Senegalese
Spanish
Swedish
Ukrainian 

I initially thought I’d have a longer list, but as I was scrolling through my iPod I realised that although I have music from all around the world, often they are still singing in English (so while, for example, I have a few Bulgarian bands on my iPod, the lyrics are sung in English). I do wish more bands and artists would sing in their native language, as to my ears, it always sounds better than English.

Poll Question: What is your preference?
Poll Choice	Votes	Poll Statistics
instrumental (no lyrics)	20	[21.98%]
Foreign language lyrics	13	[14.29%]
Native language lyrics	9	[9.89%]
Any lyrics	4	[4.40%]
Vocals, but not necessarily lyrics	17	[18.68%]
Depends on the vocalist	28	[30.77%]
You can not vote in this poll

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