Lyrics or Tune?

Following on from the Donnie Darko/Gary Jules "Mad World" thread...

Is the lyrical content of a song important to you? Or is the musical structure, and voice as an instrument more your take?

To me, the lyrics make or break a truly great song. The lyrics of some songs can really move me, even if I've heard them before. I find that a song paints a picture of something in someone's life or experience, and the words are clearly the most direct expression of that, with the music setting the mood. Where an emotive set of words comes together with a good tune, you have a great song in my opinion.

 

I think we've done this one before but no harm in doing it again

For me, tune - every time. I very rarely listen to the lyrics of a song. There are a notable exceptions though, mainly cases where the lyrics are so clear you can't help hearing and understanding them:

- Sinead O'Connor, Nothing Compares 2 U
- Most Tracy Chapman songs
- The Gary Jules version of Mad World
- Most of the earlier Beatles stuff
...and quite a few others but they're definitely in the minority for me.

The one song who's lyrics I do really love (and know) is "Time" from Dark Side of the Moon.

It's tunes all the way though for me. A tune will have me in tears long before any lyrics.

Michael.

 

tune

 

Tune every time - hence my liking for the Cocteau Twins where the lyrics are a) mostly incomprehensible and b) meaningless if you can understand them...

 

the guitar. or if there isnt one, whatever instrument is playing lead.

I challenge anyone who plays an instrument to tell me they listen to anything else 'first' that their own instrument when its being played!

between the two options though the tune over the vocal.

 

with certain songs it's the vocals. but most of the time i'd go with the tune. certainly a lot of the music i listen to doesn't even have a vocal.
cheers

julian

 

None of the above...

 

Definitely the music (of which the tune is of course just a part - albeit a major one), although great lyrics will make something extra special. If lyrics were the only thing then I wouldn't be up for anything foreign would I or as Julian points nout, instrumentals

A total sucker for walking basslines though. Oh and twangy guitars too

 

I would have to go with liking both. Surely what makes a great song is having both ingredients?

Having just a decent tune and shite lyrics is probably why there is so much rubbish made these days and why there are so many cover versions. Most of which are painful reminder of how good music used to be.

If I have to plump for the tune only – it would have to be an instrumental :band: .

 

Interesting... Certainly I wouldn't go with just lyrics with no semblance of tune (Poetry perhaps?), but there are some songs which I like that are pretty close, like Tracy Chapman's Behind the Wall (which is pretty chilling) and Eleanor McEvoy's Isn't it a Little Late?

However, not sure I was very clear in my first post, I like a good tune too, and am currently playing Mr Scruff's Keep it Unreal. But the greatest songs to me are the culmination of both.

 

There are no instruments at all in that, so pretty hard to ignore the lyrics . In general though for me, it's the music that hits me and I usually don't even listen to the lyrics unless they're unavoidable.

The same goes for opera, where it's usually impossible to understand what they're singing anyway allthough if you know the opera you probably have an understanding of roughly what they're on about.

Such as John Lennon's "Imagine"

Michael.

 

I think for me tune is most important ,(as I listen to a lot of jazz I guess it would be) but if the lyrics are obvious and too bad, then that can put me off the music.
Having said that somebands I listen to the lyrics a lot more than the music. I blame ABC the lexicon of love for that. Not that they are great lyrics but at the time I was a love sick teen and the lyrics meant so much. Sad eh?

 

Not really sure. Both I guess. I listen to alot of non vocal stuff.

Really does come down to the individual track.

 

Mainly tune. The fusion of great lyrics with a great tune is what makes an outstanding song for me. The output of Elvis Costello springs to mind. Mind you Yesterday started off with the working title Scrambled Eggs. Lennon and McCarteney always did the tune first, and that's how I prefer to work.

 

You should hear some of John Cooper Clarke's stuff then Quality poet and with some pretty basic but effective music or accompiament behind them.

seoulman - ABC's Lexicon of love is a great album - "Show me" and "Poison arrow" in particular

Tune for me every time - lyrics are good (especially ones like on "I am the walrus"), but vocals on psy-trance don't work IMHO, and a lot of music should be just music, as with metal or rock, sometimes you can barely figure out what they're saying at all!

 

I will admit that a killer riff, beat or chorus blows the lyrics into almost insignificance to me. So tune almost all the time.

I tend to find oddly enough that people who listen hard to the lyrics are less interested in what it's being played on, and more interested in the music itself. I have been trying to listen more to the lyrics recently (as taught by the people who I mentioned) and will say that I may have been missing something all these years....

 

I usually don't notice the lyrics (bar the chorus) of most songs until I've heard the song so many times I know it inside and out (usually months or years after I first hear the song). Then I may start to gradually notice the lyrics, and it's usually quite an enjoyable experience, though not always.

This is, of course, dependent upon the song. Some songs I notice the lyrics immediately as they're pretty up front and essential to the music (most simple acoustic music comes to mind).

The best thing is when I start discovering the lyrics to a song I love and realise that the lyrics are really great and moving, and the song suddenly takes on a whole new dimension of greatness.

Amusingly enough I do have the problem of lyrics sometimes ruining a good song for me... A perfect example is Live and Let Die - a great song and real headbanging/air-guitar inducing, but when Paul (and/or Axl) sings "the world in which we live in" I just break down and think "NOOOOO, you can't say that, that's just plain stupid!" And it's hard to enjoy the song after that... I've gradually been training myself to ignore the offending lyric, but it's been a long hard struggle and only worth it cos the song is so good.

Dunc