I'm curious here about your attitude to lyrics when appreciating music. For me personally they're not important in principle; my "default mode" is to ignore them, but occasionally I can be attracted to great lyrics, so I choose the second option. Obviously I can't here compare prog listeners to other people, but I'd somehow suspect that we, as a group on average, rate the importance of lyrics lower than other people into music. I may be wrong though.

Feel free to share your views in the comments!

As a musician, this is a question that really interests me. The "problem" I have with lyrics is that, by and large, as soon as lyrics are added to a song it becomes "about" something -- this has a huge bearing on the mood of the piece. Of course, instrumental music also has a mood and a feeling (or many), but the interpretation for the listener is much wider -- I feel more free listening to instrumental music. Another interesting point is that lyrics in languages I don't understand become part of the music, like another instrument.

My own view is that lyrics are the hardest thing to get right in a song. It's no accident that "most singers don't enunciate properly" -- I think this is usually deliberate - an attempt to make the lyrical content more like an instrument. In fact, I find that when singing a vocal part, I very quickly forget what the words actually mean and concentrate rather on stretching/splitting/moulding them to fit the music. In that sense, I could be singing absolute gibberish and it wouldn't make any difference to me.

In the prog genre, I can think of one example where lyrical content has become a problem for me -- Porcupine Tree. I love their music up to a certain point (around early 2000s), since the lyrical content was either sparse enough or vague enough to seem to balance well with the music, but at some point the lyrics became too much "about something" in particular and this began to put me off.

Outside of prog... listening to Bob Dylan without the lyrics would seem fairly pointless, so it does depend on the music. That said, I really enjoyed some of the Zeppelin bonus mixes in the latest incarnation of their re-re-re-re-re-re-re remasters that were sans-lyrics.

^ You should be able to vote now. I "thanked" you, which gives you an additional 5 points; if I remember well you need at least 40 points to be able to vote in polls (this to avoid trolls that just subscribe to pollute polls with their voting - yes, that kind of people do exist...).

My choice is option 4, which somehow seems to me an obvious one. For some music (rock operas, some epic songs or concept albums) lyrics can be very important to me, but in general I am first and foremost attracted by the music. So, for example, the lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar are very important to me, as are those of most Yes music (despite the fact that I generally don't understand them... or maybe because of that...). But, as said, most of the times it is the music that primes and lyrics are secondary. It is when the add something substantial to the music that they become important. Wonderful lyrics with awful music will not convince me, however.

Hi,

What is strange to me, is that a lot of the early "progressive music" was not quite, or exactly about the "melody", and the work was defined differently. I suppose that we could say that YES and JT kinda changed that to more "melody" ... but in the end, "progressive music" in the early days was more about adding/including elements of new music ... and not the same old thing. The joke used to be that the American AM Radio was all about the melody ... nothing else.

I probably would use the word "composition" instead of "melody", being that a "melody" gets repeated, and within a compositional definition, it might not get repeated. IF ... mighty IF ... it is repeated, then we are looking at the pop structure and not necessarily "progressive music".

Lyrics is another story and more on that in a different post.

Unfortunately I find a lot of prog lyrics to be pretty poor and they can make the rest of the music unlistenable, so in those cases they are really important because they kill the whole track. I can't count the number of tracks I've been enjoying right up to the point where the singer starts in then nope I'm out.

"...  Yes lyrics are mostly gibberish ..."

"... bad lyrics ... "

"...Another interesting point is that lyrics in languages I don't understand become part of the music, like another instrument..."

"... most singers don't enunciate properly..."

From a theater perspective, there is something about "lyrics" that we do not accept, or wish to understand or, worse, don't give a damn about. It is no secret in a LIVE theater audience that EVERY NIGHT is different, even though the actors are using the same moves and the same words. For us to think that the audience is stupid and actually follows, or believes, what is being told them as if it was the church in many places ... is only going to confuse any ideas and thoughts you will have about this.

In the earlier days of the "start" of "progressive this and that" you had The Moody Blues give you some poetry ... which sounded really pretty in that album. The next album, you got the whiff ... it was cardboard, and when you go back to the previous, it is nice ... but nothing fancy or out of the ordinary, and certainly not a "major" work of poetry, as defined by academic standards.

I still think that many folks in the "early" progressive music days, were more about POETRY, than they were about lyrics, which had a reputation in radio for crap and just "ditties" (quick dirty rhymes and clever set of words in a sentence) ... and all of a sudden, some things don't fit. But, "poetry" was not for everyone, and STILL to this day, folks dismiss Pete Sinfield, for his work and assist in various places, that helped elevate the quality of his words ... it also helped that some folks were better at "poetry" than they were at "rock singing" which was the case with Greg Lake, that helped define the idea and mode even better, in a polarizing album that to this day, folks might not see how much of a photograph the album is of the time and place, and who, specifically, they might be talking about in murky clouds or words. There was no secret anywhere who the megalomaniacs were in one song. There were no secrets to the wind, that no one heard (intentionally I might add), as a way to say that they disliked all the drugs, clothes and rock music! The wind moves, and the meaning of the words ... changes!

Fast forward a few years, and you get someone like Roy Harper, and now clearly, Peter Hammill. And, at the time, it was either love or hate. And even RH did not do much touring other than by himself because everyone thought he was mooching off Jimmy, and so on ... but no one could handle PH, and how different, he sounded. It created a love or hate it thing. The weird thing, is that NO ONE said anything about his words at all ... it was all a dislike for his personal style of singing, which was emotional to the core, and a lot less about the 'emotion" that one note is supposed to have and show, which is where another musical fallacy needs to die and fall apart ... the this is happy and that is sad crap. RH was for the longest time about his words, and how the song came out of it. He doesn't even care of a song comes out of it or not, because he is just following his words as he plays and sings ... we have a hard time with this, because these folks have a "tendency" to never know when to stop, and the audience has a tendency to get bored, specially the rock audiences, who have an idea that only their songs matter. Never mind the artist and writer.

I have a lot of music that is "different" and I have it because it was something that challenged the "norm" when it came to "lyrics". Someone I met, that liked AD2 told me their lyrics were weird and made no sense. Well, to me they do make sense, and they are written as if it was meant to be so. I believe they knew what they were saying, and how, and we sit here and try to figure out how and why. CAN was the same thing with Damo ... what was he saying, though he had a few words here and there as some sort of hint, however, in his case, it was less about the meaning of any words, than it was about the "expression" itself ... which generated a lot of positive reviews and concert footage that we still watch, wondering how he did that. However, both of these were close to the artistic scene that became known as "krautrock" (sick!) and had been aligned with film, theater and the written arts. In theater, at the time, as well as rock concerts, actors got on stage and free formed words, and you can see an example of Klaus Kinski delivering his spiel to an audience is the Werner Herzog special. Were the words important? Yep! Many responded. Were the words themselves, something that you would read and think about? NO. And now you have 2 opposite things ... words that mean something delivered in this way, and words that don't mean anything delivered differently. 

Where is the bottom line?

We still don't have an answer, and in some cases, refuse to answer, because we think that "jane got a gun" is heavy lyric and something else isn't. At that point, I'm not sure that the words themselves are the issue ... it's how it is said, or sung that brings it across, and makes it well known. And, in this area, there are a lot of rock singers that are very good. A lot of folks might not like Mick, but he is one of those folks that works on HOW his words have to come out to get the effect on the song, and The Rolling Stones perfect that for many years ... you remember the song by how Mick introduced it! And if you said the same words at a party ... you would get a lot of blarney, I bet! Does that make it a good lyric? Not necessarily, but it does add CONTENT to the song, which is a characteristic that we like to see in a lot of our music.

Another good example these past few years, is Kate Bush, and how she has started to create pieces of music that are not beat driven, and are strictly flow driven, and it is a style that is really hard to listen to since we are attached to the beat, but there is a certain beauty in its freedom that is neat ... we rarely consider that ... and in the end, all it is there for, is to color her words, which (generally speaking) is rather poetic.

This ends up leading me to some of the big names in words, or lyrics, which I will try to work on a different thread. It's hard to ignore a Bob Dylan, a Ian Anderson, and so many others out there ... 

Very interesting topic.   I guess option 4 is the most adequate in my case.

Beginning 10-15 years ago, I started to pay much more attention to the lyrics, and I've had much pleasure of doing it.

One of the best examples, I can tell, is my initially experience with H to He Who Am... about 10 years ago. The first couple 

of times I listened to it, I found it rather boring. But then, I got the idea to read the lyrics which showed to move me 

very much, and suddenly this album became entirely another experience for me.

Today, it's one of the albums I'm most fond of, while I find its lyrics not less than simply the best I've ever seen. H to He showed also

to be the door for my entrance to the world of VdGG, so today I'm fond/very fond of two other albums by them as well. 

exactly

If you would like to share some of your favourite lyrics with others, you can do it in this thread (only excerpts allowed):

https://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=129673" rel="nofollow - Poetic Pieces for the Mind and Spirit  

I'd like to add that lyrics, together with artwork (especially on LPs), make listening to vocal albums a multiart experience which

can be much richer than only paying attention to the sounds alone. Lyrics can have much poetic beauty, and they can be very 

intellectually giving and inspiring as well.

I won't mention any names, but there was one time I purchased a CD from a band that is quite popular on this site, and after reading the lyrics in the enclosed booklet, I threw it away without hearing a single note. Maybe the band and the record company now have my money, but my time is too valuable to waste on lyrical drivel.  

In fact I'm not going to defend my lack of attention for lyrics. Actually, despite having lived in the UK for 14 years, I'm still able to listen around the content of English lyrics, not so much if they're German. So I see why bad English lyrics are more of an issue for native speakers. I have caught myself liking something with quite embarrassing lyrics; mostly I'm just able to ignore it and take the voice for its sound alone. On the other hand, I occasionally pay attention to Peter Hammill's lyrics but mostly not, knowing that I miss something there. But in my brain the meaning of lyrics and the music are really quite separate. For me personally it's not so much that "lyrics are about something and have a huge bearing on the mood of the piece"; rather I get the mood from how it sounds, and may later discover that the lyrics are not matched to the mood that I get (or sometimes but rarely they are, or I never find out, which is probably the most frequent case).

I can appreciate lyrics that have no obvious meaning but may trigger the imagination. This kind of lyrics actually is the best match in my view to music that is "autonomous" as music in the first place. Sometimes the music follows the lyrics, which is an entirely different story.

Although, contradicting myself here to some extent, in one of my music projects (in fact the only one that has a significant amount of singing) we always do the lyrics first. They mean something, but are not that important on their own... but I can be inspired well by existing lyrics as a musician and composer.

It depends on genre. Hip hop and folk music are meaningless without lyrics.

Prog, metal and electronic music can get bogged down by lyrics.

Short answer, not important but if done well of course they boost an album's rating.

Wordless vocalizations and foreign languages i don't understand are a plus!

Some/most new lyrics lately are really tough to get into or understand what the band is trying to portray/communicate. It could be a language barrier (ie Riverside...) that makes it tough to understand what Mariuz is trying to convey, but I appreciate what he is doing.

Clearly not the case with a lyricist like Neil Peart......he makes you think.

Hi,

Thank you ... I get concerned when people think they have to have some meaning before they eat their bowl of cereal. It's weird, and rather strange if you ask me.

Some stuff is nice, some isn't, and the main issue is ... the personal side of things and the choices made here ... there is no effort to help identify what might be considered "good" lyric and what is considered "bad" lyric, this conveying this poll to nothing but an internet nothing. 

The worst part, is that in many cases we are saying that words don't matter ... and you should try that on the wife or kids, see if you like it! The problem, and question, is when it is overblown and people think that it is important because it was Joe Schmoe that said it and did it! 

If Neil Peart's lyrics, don't stand out on someone else's rendition, then his lyrics are not that great! That's really simple. If you can not feel, or say, the same words as Ian, then you know that there is something there that stands out (in earlier days, anyway!) ... 

We remember many words in literature ... and we still quote Shakespeare and many other writers ... well we also quote the horrible translations of that one book that changed the meanings to a Walt Disney version of things! Hundreds of actors have lived through many of those words, and they still live.

This is an issue with a lot in this board ... a lot of the material is ignored, without any intelligent discussion and comments, other than personal garbage. So, how is it that you will think that one person's words are OK and fine, and another's are not? Are they not people, as well?

personally, it is not the "lyrics" that matter ... it's the cohesion of the two ... and you can tell that many folks have not heard operas, so they can get a different of how music for 200+ years has interpreted words, only to find that in the 21st century no one gives a damn, except throwing stones at someone ... for whatever they said or thought.

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: ...I can't count the number of tracks I've been enjoying right up to the point where the singer starts in then nope I'm out.

Same here, Ian. I don't understand why so many feel the need to vocalize, and to do it poorly.

Megistus wrote: I went through a phase of listening to German reggae a while back.

As if regular reggae isn't awful enough to begin with:)

I'll bounce over Ian's comment, on which I agree mostly.

Being bilingual (almost tri-lingual with Spanish), I usually try to understand what those prog lyrics +/- mean (I manage in Italian, but not in Swedish or Swahili). I generally have to pay attention to a lot of lyrics, but I will only do if I love the music and the vocal timbre doesn't annoy me (whiny vocals of neo-prog) beyond belief. More than bad lyrics, bad vocals will be a turn off.

However, for albums I love and couldn't understand the lyrics because they were in Finnish, Kobaïan (or Thaï), I've gone out of my way to find translation. I even have the translation of Anglagard's Hybris inside the booklet, same with Hoyry Kone and a few others.

However in general, I do find lyrics often better in prog (not a rule, because too many exception to make it one) than in other music styles (some Rap/Hip-Hop also rank fairly high up there), but then again, I generally listen more to instrumental music than sung music.

To make a long story short, outside of my living room, I "hear/get" lyrics almost systematically in French without the slightest effort (generally music sung in French being broadcasted, lyrics are often either important - not just politically - or witty), very often so in English (but a little more attention is required - a bit more so, as I age) and generally don't try for other languages.

I am confused... how can you like ska, rocksteady and dub, but dislike reggae?

Unless you dislike the sort of cheesy reggae that has dominated the mainstream -- things like UB40's onslaught of horrible cover versions post 1984, or Aswad's departure into utter commercialism with "that one song they are known for" -- rather than both bands' other authentic material which in my opinion is well worth listening to.

Dub originally was simply reggae without the lyrics and with added production techniques, i.e. Lee Scratch Perry, etc... but has since broadened into something utterly beyond that... to the point that it's now perfectly normal to have dub music.. with lyrics... which brings me back to the German "reggae" I was listening to, which may have been more aptly described as dub, although I didn't want to confuse matters by calling it that!  Unfortunately, I've totally forgotten the names of the artists I was listening to so can't give an example. 

PS. I utterly despise reggaeton!

I can indeed understand the critical comments concerning some of the lyrics, I still think though that not so few people

could benefit well by paying more attention to the good ones. 

When talking about lyrics, there's also the question of their potential function as means for improvement of 

society and culture. 

-It's very much like my Punk dislike/disinterest. I can only think of a dozen or so "true" punk-tunes that I somewhat enjoy (early The Damned-singles, some Misfits are kind of fun, and a handful of of Sex Pistols-songs are cool...), but most of it is either just plain ugly or as with Reggae - musically bores me to tears. Still I do love loads of so-called Post-Punk/New Wave and a lot of "Proto-Punk", early Hardcore and Gothic Rock, Zolo, British Ska...