Don’t forget the lyrics

One key inspiration for my musical odyssey started when I was carpooling to work. One of the great annoyances of that time period was the radio.

It was the K103 morning show, and I did not really have a problem with the crew--they seemed like nice enough people, and the Stump the Jock guy was clearly pretty knowledgeable--but so much of the music was just so crappy.

It wasn't all bad. They played a fair amount of Pink and the song you had to guess was often from the eighties, and decent, and then they would play the rest of it, so it could have been worse. In general, though, the music was mediocre, and played over and over again.

Where I would sometimes resent the crew is when they would say good things about the music. Sarah Bareilles is so rebellious! Taylor Swift packs so much meaning into her lines! No, and NO!

Refusing to comply with the requests of the people who are helping you make money, and silently ignoring advice while thinking bad thoughts about the person giving it, isn’t really all that hardcore. As for depth and meaning in Taylor Swift, where do I start?

You know a song that impresses me in its layers of meaning? Coldplay's “Viva La Vida”. First of all, they set up rhymes that are not completed, so they can move on to the next phrase while you still hear the phrase that was not completed.

For some reason I can't explain
Once you were gone it was never--

And they say "Never an honest word", but "Never the same" is still suggested, because that would be the logical rhyme. So it is conveyed both that the loss of the person changes things irrevocably, and that there is also a loss of honesty, sincerity, and possibly even comprehension of this new order of things.

People ask "But who is it talking about?" looking for someone specific who literally went through all of those things. That’s not the point. Usually the most powerful rulers end up dead when deposed, rather than sweeping the streets, but there are wealthy people who can end up in menial jobs, and fill that role. Probably the closest thing you have to a specific reference is that "Seas would rise when I gave the word" kind of sounds like a reference to Canute, only he gave the word for the sea not to rise and it did anyway, which was his point.

Anyway, what we clearly have instead of something literal is image after image that evokes an emotion of having lost and been overturned. The images are more for political power, but for someone who has felt in control of their life, and found out they weren't, or someone who has lost innocence, the emotions work. It can have emotional resonance for anyone.

I'm not saying that there are not many people who can relate to the line "And there's a drawer of my things at your place", but there’s not much poetry. Isn't the point of music that you don't have to be that literal? Music is exactly where it is appropriate to speak of the pompatus of love and not provide an answer key. I have as much fun looking for the symbolism in American Pie as anyone, but it's mental. The emotional resonance of the song does not change if you know that Bob Dylan had a jacket that looked like James Dean's.

And yet with saying all of that, I also have to acknowledge that I’m a punk rock fan, where the lyrics are often quite simple, and I’m not that big a Coldplay fan. I listen to “Viva La Vida” and sometimes “Talk”, and that’s about it. I do remember a quote from Chris Martin though, where he was saying something along the lines of they weren’t really going to get any bigger, so the goal that made sense was to try and be better—better at their instruments, work at the music harder—and work that way.

Taylor Swift is cute, and she writes her own songs and plays guitar and so right there she is way ahead of a lot of tween idols. At the same time, she comes off as a little shrill to me (Is that what they call “pitchy?”), so I think maybe some voice lessons aren’t completely uncalled for. Though also, that means she is probably not using Autotune. And sure, she is young, so there may be a limit to what sort of depth you can expect, but can’t you try a little harder? Yes still, she really tries harder than a lot of them, and still I reject her.

And this strikes at the heart of why my music post keeps expanding—there are just so many contradictions, and so much of it is not logical. We will keep exploring that.