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Song Lyrics Decline - Me Me Me, Doh!

There are always good and bad songwriters. The good songwriters will always be there, though not always as well-known as the likes of Donald Fagen, Paul McCartney or Joni Mitchell.

I've worked with a lot of songwriters at BIMM popular music school when I worked there for many years. If I were to make one observation, it would be that some the most sensitive and imaginative lyrics were written by lesbian songwriters, Here's one example....

 
It strikes me as pretty silly to "analyse the words" without any critical analysis of the quality of the lyrics.

Though looking at modern poetry there does seem to be a high value placed on squeezing in obscure and interesting words.

Then again, who reads modern poetry?
 
the way music is reproduced leads to different behaviour in what people listen to - from the article

“Another way that music has changed is that “the first 10-15 seconds are highly decisive for whether we skip the song or not,” Zangerle said.

Previous research has also suggested that people tend to listen to music more in the background these days, she added.“
 
No more classics like

Tutti frutti, oh Rudy
Tutti frutti, oh Rudy
Tutti frutti, oh Rudy
Tutti frutti, oh Rudy
Tutti frutti, oh Rudy
Awop-bop-a-loo-mop, alop bom bom

Then?
 
The decline in lyrics’ difficulty observed over time for rap is confirmed by the negative for Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) readability measure (in a sample of 30 sentences, words with three or more syllables are counted and used to compute the final SMOG score). This indicates a detriment in complexity concerning the lyric’s readability (cf. in Table 4). This contradicts, to some extent, the increasing use of difficult words, over time, shown for rap, while supporting the increase in complexity shown for R&B; cf. for difficult words in Table 4. This contradiction supports, however, the conclusion extracted from the compression ratio, which shows that the lyrics become more repetitive. Thus, it seems that the increase (in absolute terms) of difficult words is only due to repetitions in the lyrics. Differently, when weighting the number of difficult words according to the number of sentences (which is performed when computing SMOG), the effect is negative, meaning that in proportion to the number of sentences, the complexity of the text actually decreases with time.

Blimey.
 
What a waste of effort studies like this are... things change over time? Who knew? My favourite from the article

“Rap music has become more angry than the other genres”

Hmmmm, I can't for the life of me think why this might be :rolleyes:

Still I guess as an article for ageing male, predominantly white middle class, audiophiles to have their prejudices reinforced it serves its purpose!
 
I'm kind of intrigued by the finding that rap has become both more repetitive and increased the use of 'difficult' words. I what a German musicologist considers a 'difficult' word and how they relate to a track like this classic from SL.

 
With the advent of texting, I can see how writing in general has become abbreviated. In music, there are, of course, plenty of counter examples. Okkervil River and Frontier Ruckus' entire catalog, for example.
 
not all Rap is dumbing down - Alphabet Aerobics!

"Alphabet Aerobics"

Now it's time for our wrap up.
Let's give it everything we've got.
Ready? Begin.

Artificial amateurs aren't at all amazing
Analytically, I assault, animate things
Broken barriers bounded by the bomb beat
Buildings are broken, basically I'm bombarding
Casually create catastrophes, casualties
Canceling cats got their canopies collapsing
Detonate a dime of dank daily doing dough
Demonstrations, Don Dada on the down low
Eating other editors with each and every energetic
Epileptic episode, elevated etiquette
Furious fat fabulous fantastic
Flurries of funk felt feeding the fanatics
Gift got great global goods gone glorious
Getting godly in his game with the goriest
Hit 'em high, hella hype, historical
Hey holocaust hymns hear 'em holler at your homeboy
Imitators idolize, I intimidate
In an instant, I'll rise in an irate state
Juiced on my jams like Jheri curls jocking joints
Justly, it's just me, writing my journals
Kindly I'm kindling all kinds of ink on
Karate kick type Brits in my kingdom
Let me live a long life, lyrically lessons is
Learned lame louses just lose to my livery
My mind makes marvelous moves, masses
Marvel and move, many mock what I've mastered
Niggas nap knowing I'm nice naturally
Knack, never lack, make noise nationally
Operation, opposition, off not optional
Out of sight, out of mind, wide beaming opticals
Perfected poem, powerful punchlines
Pummeling petty powder puffs in my prime
Quite quaint quotes keep quiet it's Quantum
Quarrelers ain't got a quarter of what we got uh
Really raw raps, rising up rapidly
Riding the rushing radioactivity
Super scientifical sound search sought
Silencing super fire saps that are soft
Tales ten times talented, too tough
Take that, challengers, get a tune up
Universal, unique untouched
Unadulterated, the raw uncut
Verb vice lord victorious valid
Violate vibes that are vain make em vanish
Why in my world would a wise wordsmith just
Weaving up words, weeded up on my work shift
Xerox, my X-radiation holes extra large
X-height letters, and xylophone tones
Yellow-back, yak mouth, young ones' yaws
Yesterday's lawn yard sell our yawn
Zig-Zag zombies zooming to the zenith
Zero in Zen thoughts, overzealous rhyme ZEALOTS!

Good. Can you say it faster?

can you keep up?
>
 
I honestly can’t gather the inclination to read such tosh. Popular songs are generally simplistic in terms of lyrics. The higher echelons of talent combine erudition & popularity but this is rare.
 
Woodface said:
The higher echelons of talent combine erudition & popularity but this is rare.
Click to expand...

Yes, erudition maybe, though popularity may be limited. I'd put it more simply - some songwriters are genuine poets and some just aren't. For me you are or you are not a poet. There's not much in between, you have it or you don't. And it doesn't have to be flowery poetry, it can be modern earthy poetry. A couple of good lyrics chosen at random.....

Lunch with Gina (Donald Fagen)
That must be her again
She's leaning on my bell
That cold psychotic brain
The one I know so well
So I'm nailed to the floor in the no-option zone
There's about zero chance she'll give up and go home

This endless afternoon
It started on the day I met her
Lunch with Gina is forever

She's coming 'round the corner
Her body's just a blur
I peel out like The Flash
It don't mean boo to her
So I duck into Nino's—she's barred from the place
The minute I walk out she's right in my face

She's got nothing but time
No use in trying to be clever
Lunch with Gina is forever


Almost Blue (Elvis Costello)
Almost blue
Almost doing things we used to do
There's a girl here and she's almost you
Almost
All the things that your eyes once promised
I see in hers too
Now your eyes are red from crying
Almost blue

Flirting with this disaster became me
It named me as the fool who only aimed to be

Almost blue
It's almost touching, it will almost do
There is part of me that's always true
Always
Not all good things come to an end
Now it is only a chosen few
I have seen such an unhappy couple
Almost me
Almost you
Almost blue
 
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