Deep or dope?

[drdoug]

I was musing this morning in the shower about song lyrics that are impenetrable or incomprehensible. The default assumption varies with different sorts of music:

• Goth/indie music: songwriter was making (or trying to make) an allusion more profound and more subtle than you have understood
  
• Hippy/dance music: songwriter was off their face

Sort of Joyce

Comments

[makyo]

songwriter was making (or trying to make) an allusion more profound and more subtle than you have understood
... while off their face.

[emmy_mallow]

Interesting that you assume drugs are only involved in the dance scene!

[drdoug]

I wouldn't for a moment suggest that psychoactive substances have had any influence on any music scene, except perhaps in a very small number of limited specific situations. :-)

[vinaigrettegirl]

So glad it's not just me who goes through these definitional agonies. They do, however, make me feel Officially Old, because in 5 or 6 years I'll have a teenaged boy in the house, and although I thought when I was a teenager that a lot of lyrics were either pretentious or written whilst off the face, and felt Old then, it's definitely the presence of the Offspring that puts me into a different sector of Old. Were I a man I'd be feeling ready for the high-waisted trousers with braces, the porkpie hat, and a stump of cigar whilst breathing heavily as I rest from digging the allotment.

Off to listen to some of that nice John Shuttleworth, I think.

[moral_vacuum]

MacArthur Park is a case in point, on the hippy side. WTF?

Intrestingly (to me, anyway), the great psychedelic moment from Status Quo "Pictures of Matchstick Men" was not actually written under the influence of drugs. The band weren't using anything stronger than beer at that stage, and decided to write any old psychedelic-sounding nonsense which subsequently became their first massive hit.

[drdoug]

I did toy with adding "Metal/rock music: songwriter didn't care", specifically thinking of Status Quo.