Words

Over at The A.V. Club, they ask about good songs with bad lyrics. For some reason, Sam Adams takes this opportunity to attack a good lyricist, Neil Young:

The oeuvre of Neil Young offers so many loamy turds, it’s hard to pick just one. The casual sexism of “A Man Needs A Maid”? The groaning pun of “Like A Hurricane”? Surely the “Powderfinger” gem ”Big John’s been drinkin’ since the river took Emmylou” represents some sort of nadir in the annals of lyric-writing. But even among Young’s stinkers, “Cortez The Killer” shines out like a shaft of gold. Ostensibly an attack on Spanish colonialism, the song portrays the Aztecs Cortez conquered as naïve, peace-loving savages for whom “hate was just a legend, and war was never known.” Apparently under the impression that the Aztecs conquered most of present-day Mexico by way of moral suasion, Young reduces them to an idealized caricature every bit as reductive and dehumanizing as the Spaniards’ colonialist rhetoric....

Adams seems to confuse not liking the ideas behind the lyrics with not liking the lyrics. "Maid" is not one of Young's better songs, and if anything, it's the odd lyric that gets your attention.

"Powderfinger" is a great song, with a great lyric, including the line quoted above. It's one of the best examples of Young painting word-pictures, and doing it in a way that make the song one of the most effective, and affecting, he ever recorded. If this is Adam's idea of a bad lyric, what does he call the schlock you can hear on most Top 40 songs?

Adams is bothered by the puns of "Like A Hurricane"? It's not just one of Neil's greatest songs, it's one of his greatest lyrics. Yeah, the chorus has a few basic puns ("You are like a hurricane/ there's calm in your eyes/ and I'm getting blown away"), but it's not like he's going overboard and doing something on the level of "your teeth are like the stars, they come out at night." Anyway, the chorus fits with the mood of the music, which is what lyrics are supposed to do. Furthermore, the verses are beautiful, and the switch from "I am just a dreamer/and you are just a dream" to "You are just a dreamer/ and I am just a dream" suddenly takes the song to a different place.



Adams stakes his claim on "Cortez The Killer," another great song. Once again, Adams seems bothered by the ideas behind the words, not the artistry. Yeah, the political side is very hippy-dippy, with dopey ideas about "natural" people living off the land, against the evil "civilized" world. He even seems to give the Aztecs a pass on human sacrifice. It's ridiculous (not to mention condescending), but the point is it's about a beatific view of the world, as communicated very effectively by both words and music. Sure, the song fails as a history lesson, but that's not a test it has to pass (allegedly Young wrote the song while studying high school history)--what art can do is give us glimpses into other worlds, even those that never existed, and on that level, the song--words included--succeeds. Furthermore, Adams seems to miss the breathtaking change in the final verse, that reveals the whole thing is a love song, and everything we heard before may just be a metaphor about a lost paradise.



PS Check this out for a very enjoyable "debate" on the meaning of "Cortez The Killer."