Lyrics: The Next Generation

Comments (not posts) about my choice of lyrics were aplenty. The criticism centered around the jaded appearance that music stopped for me around 1978. While the dark days of disco created a big line of demarcation in musical growth, followed by the Big Hair Eighties, I have to admit that I left a lot of some really great music and lyrics off my recent post.

With the exception of rap, there has been a pretty good surge in popular music of late. I guess I have to include “hip-hop” in that even though I fail to understand the distinction between rap and hip-hop.

Just so I don’t date myself, I feel the need to update my earlier post of lyrics and add songwriters that are closer to this century. But just to defend my choices of the first post, I did have some method to my madness. As a fellow Blogger was told in harsh terms, I chose music that moved me at the time I first heard it and, at the time, I was very easy to move. Being young and having something called “your music” is very appealing in artistic terms and very difficult to forget.

I think it is obvious when music turned to the street that groups and songs were manufactured for short shelf life (which explains why I can walk through Best Buy and see thousands of groups I never heard of and, at the same time, the bins for the Beatles, Van Morrison, and even the Moody Blues are full).

As further evidence – if the Moody Blues point didn’t put you over the top – many of the early rapper’s most marketable songs were spiced up with “our” music. Best-selling songs like Gangsta Paradise was spiced up from the music of Stevie Wonder, Public Enemy ripped off Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth, and Wyclef Jean borrowed musical inspiration from Roberta Flack. Even Eminem used Aeosmith’s Dream On and Dido to further prove the current generation can’t lay claim to its own music, instead stealing it from earlier generations. If we children of the Sixties had to take music from the previous generation, Frank and Dino would have had our legs broken.

Not to rag on the current generation, but I think the reason people my age are so musically stuck in the Sixties and the Seventies is because we felt like the music was ours. I’m not sure today’s generation can feel that way. Still, there are some better songs being written now and it seems as though the singer-songwriter is having a bit of resurgence.

Like many others, I haven’t leapt to make comparisons between the Beatles and Cold Play. The Beatles were revolutionary; combining full melodies and instrumentation with words of love and of changing the world. Cold Play still sounds like they haven’t hit their stride yet, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include some of what they had to say lyrically:

Under the surface trying to break through
Deciphering the codes in you
I need a compass, draw me a map
I'm on the top, I can't get back

High up above or down below
when you’re too in love to let it go
If you never try you'll never know
Just what your worth

In a haze, a stormy haze, I’ll be round
I’ll be loving you always, always.
Here I am and I’ll take my time
Here I am and I’ll wait in line always
Always.

Give me one, 'cause one is best
In confusion, confidence
Give me peace of mind and trust
Don't forget the rest of us
Give me strength, reserve control
Give me heart and give me soul
Wounds that heal and cracks that fix
Tell me your own politik.

Sometimes songs hit you because of the way you heard them in a movie. The song from the now defunct band Remy Zero used for the movie Garden State is a perfect example. Like a moth drawn to the fire, I can’t help but put it here:

What if you catch me, where would we fall?



Even though U2 is alive and well, they forged their reputation 15 years ago. Because they are still putting out music, if only for aid concerts, they can still qualify as from this century. Here are some good ones from U2:

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devilI
t was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
I wait for you
Slight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails she makes me wait
And I wait without you

In the locust wind comes a rattle and hum
Jacob wrestled the angel and the angel was overcome
You plant a demon seed, you raise a flower of fire
See them burning crosses, see the flames, higher and higher

She runs through the streets with her eyes painted red
Under a black belly of cloud in the rain
In through a doorway she brings me
White gold and pearls stolen from the seaS
he is raging, she is raging
And the storm blows up in her eyes
She will suffer the needle chill
She is running to stand still

Midnight, our sons and daughters
Were cut down and taken from us
Hear their heartbeats

In the cold mirror of a glass
I see my reflection pass
I see the dark shades of what I used to be
I see the purple of her eyes
The scarlet of my lies
Love rescue me

Early morning, April four
A shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

Another example of a movie introducing a good songwriter was Elliott Smith writing Miss Misery which was used to end the fabulous movie, Good Will Hunting. While he has since died from an overdose (tell me you couldn’t see that coming from reading his lyrics), he has left us this bit of lyrical poetry.

next door the tv's flashing
blue frames on the wall
it's a comedy of errors, you see
it's about taking a fall
to vanish into oblivion
is easy to do
and i try to be but you know me
i come back when you want me to
do you miss me miss misery
like you say you do?

Goo and Foo are our next two and Nicholas of Cairo fame turned me on to both groups when he was renting one of our back room and having his “friends” steal my Bose radio.

From the Goo Goo Dolls:

Comin' down the world turned over
And angels fall without you there
And I go on as you get colder
or are you someone's prayer?

And from the Foo Fighters:

Tonight I'm tangled in my blanket of clouds
Dreaming aloud
Things just won't do without you, matter of fact

Back to the Eighties with Modern English and a great lyric:

Moving forward using all my breath
Making love to you was never second best
I saw the world thrashing all around your face
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace

Jack Johnson has become very popular lately but is probably best known for his light and easy music than his lyrics. Still, this isn’t bad:

It seems to me that maybe
It pretty much always means no
So don't tell me you might just let it go A
nd often times we're lazy
It seems to stand in my way
Cause no one no not no one
Likes to be let down

By the way, nobody said anything to me about this, but I did forget to include the Rolling Stones in my earlier post so I have to correct that slight:

It is the evening of the day
I sit and watch the children play
Doing things I used to do
They think are new
I sit and watch
As tears go by

There's no time to lose I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind
Ain't life unkind

I watched the glee while your kings and queens fought
for ten decades for the Gods they made
I shouted out "who killed the Kennedy's?" when after all it was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I lay traps for troubadors
who get killed before they reach Bombay
I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie,
I have my freedom but I don't have much time
Faith has been broken, tears must be cried
Let's do some living after we die

And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, We're gonna vent our frustrationI
f we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you just might find
You get what you need

The following Bob Seger song means more if you hear him singing it. You can just tell he’s at a crossroads when he belts out the following lyric:

Stood alone on a mountain top starin' out at the Great Divide
I could go east I could go west it was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin' and my soul began to rise
And pretty soon
My heart was singin'
Roll me away ...

Last but not least, I left off Pink Floyd. No, this doesn’t really follow my “new generation” theme of this post, but Floyd’s stuff is so poignant that if I were to leave them off, I would have my Blogging license taken away. Oh yes, they require a license to do this. From Floyd:

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
and if there is no room upon the hill
and if your head explodes with dark forbodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb.

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
year after year,
running over the same old ground. What have we found?
The same old fears,
wish you were here.

That's the truth, wish you were here.