Words And No Music
Reading Lyrics is an anthology of the best English language song lyrics from 1900 to 1975, according to Robert Kimball and Robert Gottlieb. Such works leave something to be desired, since lyrics are meant to be sung, not read. Nevertheless, as an aficionado, I look forward to reading it.
However, I've heard one of the selections is "People" from Funny Girl. I think the tune is pretty bad, but the words are even worse. "People--people who need people/are the luckiest people in the world." There's nothing lucky about needing someone. Having someone so you don't need someone else--now that's lucky.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:57 AM
5 Comments:
The book only deals with Broadway music and the like. No rock. This is as it should be, since rock lyrics don't even bother to rhyme correctly. They also don't care about meter.
The last few decades have shown a sad loss in sophistication. (Some would claim rap brought it back, or maybe bob Dylan, but nothing in rock or pop lately has the wit combined with formal strictness that Cole Porter of Stephen Sondheim exhibit regularly.)
"People" may not be a classic, but at least it follows the rules. It even has interior rhyme, which is always nice.
I guess so. But none of that high falutin' stuff beats, "In the wink of a young girl's eye."
I agree the lyrics in rock and its offspring rarely have the formal sophistication of pre-rock, even those with torrents of words like Dylan or rap. But that doesn't mean rock can't be touching, or moving, or have deep meaning.
The key to lyrics are what they say and how they fit the music. What rock may lose in sophisitication, it can make up in beauty or power.
Just check out the lyrics to "Oliver's Army" and then tell me rock lyrics can't touch the sophistication of Cole Porter.
No one admires Elvis Costello more than I do, but we're talking about formal sophistication here (not subject matter, where rock beats pre-rock hands down).
Let me give a few examples from "Oliver's Army" itself. In the first stanza it rhymes "talking" and "sleepwalking." Cole Porter would never do this. The stress on both words is on the first syllable--TALKing, SLEEPwalking--so the rhyme doesn't really work.
Here are some other words in the song that are near rhymes at best: "Charlie" and "party" (from "laughing party" which is a forced phrase),"grabs" and "Arabs," "work" and "Johannesburg."
Elvis may admire Rodgers and Hart, but he still writes his witty, sophisticated lyrics in the rock idiom.
Post a Comment
<< Home