Sometimes lyrics are important.
Sometimes lyrics add to a song.
Sometimes they take away from a song.
All of the time, though, lyrics are hard for me to understand.
I remember using my hard-earned paper route money to buy Aerosmith’s Pump from Strawberries. I had my own money and could do what I wanted to with it. Provided I could get a ride to, and from, the mall. And on that day I did.
When I got home I tore off the cellophane wrapper, cracked open the case, and popped the cassette into my boom box. Then I did what any hard of hearing soul does: I pulled out the liner notes, held my breath as I unfolded the paper, and prayed there’d be lyrics. In that case there was. I then lay on my bed for the next 45+ minutes; only getting up to flip the tape over.
I miss cassettes.
In my experience, they almost always had lyrics. When CDs came out it was more of a crap shoot. Which made me even madder than a hatter when I found out that CDs cost about $0.75 to make but I had to shell out as much as $20 to buy.. You’d think they could afford to print the lyrics on the liner notes and not some stupid picture of the band in concert or something.
At least there was a chance of lyrics on CDs.
When Napster angered-up those poor millionaires in the record industry by ushering in the age of the MP3, lyrics became as common as a Jabberwock. Even though I got my first set of bionic ears a few years after the dust settled on that revolution, I still had trouble hearing lyrics.
Spoiler alert: I still do.
Before I had a ConnectClip or an iPhone to stream music to those aforementioned bionic bits, I had the damnedest time hearing a lot of artists whose songs I hadn’t already fortified my ears with lyric-readings. Which meant the appalling lack of lyrics on digital music left me out of the full experience of songs. Services like Apple Music and Spotify have started offering lyrics but the certainty of their presence is somewhere between CDs and cassettes.
I want it to be 100%. Thanks to vigilant advocacy efforts of so many people and organizations, hearing assistive technology is constantly improving. Which means when I ask my Magic Eightball if all songs, no matter the format, will have lyrics in the future, it says “Outlook good”
One of the foremost poets of rock is also one of the prime examples of why we need lyrics.
Bruce Springsteen doesn’t shy away from tough topics. From his recent impressively quick turn-around of “Streets of Minneapolis” to perhaps the most mis-used song in history,“Born in the USA” the lyrics paint a brutally honest picture of life in America. Dude gets in trouble with the law and instead of prison chooses to go fight in Vietnam. And when he comes back, his job is gone. Not an uplifting song.
To my less-than-stellar ears the lyrics were murky. Not because I didn’t understand them but because I didn’t hear them. Not all of them. The chorus is always easier to hear because of both the repetition and the gusto. The verses tend to be a little more mumbly, The Boss’s trademark. Reading the lyrics gives me an appreciation my ears can’t deliver on their own.
That said, it’s not always the voice that presents the problem.
Songs like Megadeth’s “Blackmail the Universe” is a great example. They’re one of my go-to workout artists. They’re one of those metal bands that likes to crank the instruments up to eleven. They’re one of those bands whose instruments drown out their vocals.
Blackmail is a criticism on terrorism. The song isn’t in a narrative-style like Springsteen but it does feature mentions of Vietnam like him. It’s about someone going off abroad to fight terrorists while being hung out to dry by politicians back home. The song gets my blood pumping without understanding the lyrics. But the lyrics add even more to the song and allow me to push through a particularly grueling workout.
Then there are songs whose lyrics take away from a song. At least for me. The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” for instance. Once upon a time I was of the same mind as all those people who chose it as their wedding song. Romantic, no? No.
Sting sings “I’ll be watching you” thirteen times in the song. Which is bad enough. But he also sings “Oh can’t you see/You belong to me.” Twice. Yikes. That sounds a tad stalkery to me. While the music isn’t as bombastic as Megadeth, there are spots in the song when the voice is softer than the instruments and I can’t hear what’s being said. So without the lyrics, I didn’t have a firm grasp on how uncomfortable the song truly is.
I’m always actively listening to songs, always straining to hear lyrics. Sometimes the strain is successful, sometimes it’s not. That’s why I listen to new albums on repeat for days at a time. That allows me to train my brain on how the singer says each of the words. And allows me to eventually passively listen and almost subconsciously hear the lyrics.
If I’m reading and need background noise to drown out my tinnitus, it’s always someone like Miles Davis or Rikard From. Artists whose songs don’t have lyrics. Because straining to make out words being spoken in my presence is an act of survival for this hard of hearing fellow. And if I’m straining to hear lyrics, I’m not paying attention to what I’m reading.
Music’s an ocean,
there’s a world beneath the waves.
Songs are like icebergs.
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