Janszoon

Not much. I’m not much of a lyrics person in general. I listen to music for the music, if I want literature I read a book. All I ask is that lyrics not be so bad that they’re distracting. In REM’s case, I listen to them for general mood of the music, but Stipe’s lyrics are usually fairly decent.

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Lisnaholic

Thanks, rs. Good to have a name to put to the jangly guitarist, who is contributing so much to the REM sound: the "wanna-be Byrds" guy of elphenor's description, I suppose.

Yes, I will definitely take your advice and move on to Murmur next because I am well pleased with this Chronic Town recommendation. I also notice that most people here seem to favour early REM. Perhaps REM follow the arc of many bands: bold, innovative sound at the start of their careers, then getting soft, self-indulgent or over-complicated furthur down the line.

^ 11th grade!! We should have been talking about you in that "Is it creepy...?" thread about young posters. I hope MB treated you appropriately when you first came here. Is that old post identified as SGR, or did you have a chrysalis under a different name, before breaking out into the butterfly that is SGR?

__________________
"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Lisnaholic

at the bold!

Yep, I'm the same really, most often I'm happy to let lyrics wash past my small attention window and just picking up a phrase or two once in a while. That's partly because there's a good chance I'll find the lyrics annoying if I work out what the band is actually on about.

Plenty of exceptions to that rule too though; over the years I've searched out the lyrics to L Cohen, Beefheart, Syd Barratt and of course:-

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________
"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Janszoon

I have to say, I’ve never understood why Dylan’s lyrics get so much praise. I’m not saying they’re bad necessarily, but I’ve never heard anything by him that I thought was very impressive. I’m with you Leonard Cohen though.

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

rubber soul

Yes, you could say their work from 1987 on is all of the above. That was about the time they started to try to sound more commercial. They fought against that at IRS records but went full throttle after they signed with Warner Bros. And yet they still could make brilliant material with tracks like Losing My Religion and albums such as Automatic For the People and New Adventures in Hi- Fi. Even after Berry left and they became a trio, they could still put out some really great stuff. They split up finally before they could become another joke like U2.

But, yeah, their first three albums are definitely the highlight of REM's career (save AFTP of course).

__________________

SGR

Yeah lol - you can find the posts on page 10 or 11 i think - and it is under SGR - back then I was SoundgardenRocks until getting the username changed what, a year ago or so? MB did always treat me good - I was humbled with how much the posters back then knew - how much different stuff they listened to. And I'd have users like BastardOfYoung and Unknown Soldier and even Urban that I'd occasionally DM for recommendations - to which they always were accomadating.

I actually prefer 90s REM to 80s REM, despite the fact that their strongest album(s) are probably from the '80s. Their sound is a lot more varied. And their first 2000s album, Reveal, is also a favorite of mine. A very dreamy and sunny record. It doesn't have the same energy as early REM though.

Lisnaholic

Yep, Cohen has some great lyrics - very carefully worked out of course. You've probably heard the story about how Bob and Leonard once compared notes about lyric writing: Leonard, sometimes two or three months: Bob, sometimes two or three hours.

Perhaps Dylan's reputation rests on not just what he wrote, but when: he gets bonus points for innovation at various stages of his songwriting life. Some highlights to me:-
Blowin' In The Wind: very effective use of questions and simple images to make us wonder about life, maturity, freedom etc.
Like A Rolling Stone: a jarring outburst of spite of a kind not really heard before afaik
Blood On The Tracks: an album-full of story songs, packed with drama, but with charming little details worked into the fabric of the songs too: "She was thinking about her father, whom she very rarely saw" and a line that Cohen might have liked, "I kissed goodbye to the howling beast on the borderline that separated you from me."


Well, that's just a couple of examples - as you might have seen, I have a whole book-full !

__________________
"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

elphenor

lyrics are typically bad at being "literature"

because they are meant to be accompanied by music...it's almost like watching a movie with the sound off

if they knew you were going to watch it that way, it'd have been directed differently

there's definitely an art to good lyrics, although it may be an entirely different skill set from writing otherwise

__________________
Just another marketing ploy

elphenor

Syd Barrett's "Bike" is the perfect example of a song elevated by memorable lyrics

__________________
Just another marketing ploy

Queen Boo

I agree with you for once, I never got the point of judging lyrics entirely on their own without acknowledging the context of the music.

Most songs lyrics are going to be more repetitive and limited in structure compared to what you can do with a poem or a novel, so yeah Bob Dylan's lyrics on their own are not gonna hold up against *enter name of famous poet here because I don't fucking know anything about poetry* but that's missing the point, you're comparing two completely different mediums.

__________________
https://www.twitch.tv/drrobuttnik