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Why are so many metal/hard rock lyrics such merda?


Barking Spiders

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Much to the chagrin of various singers in my bands over the years I’ve never had the remotest interest in lyrics... maybe that’s why I’m a bass player 🤔

Even lyrics others consider good just seem really cheesy to me. Although I’ve always found poetry laughable as an art form and I suppose lyrics aren’t really all that different.

Mrs C says its cause I’m incapable of emphasising with the emotions of others 😐 

Edited by CamdenRob
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There are plenty of ridiculous or banal lyrics throughout popular music. Is it the wizards and goblins that are upsetting you the most? Because - as evidenced by the popularity of LOTR - lots of people like wizards and goblins. So it stands to reason lots of people will probably like songs about wizards and goblins. 😉 Personally I find the songs about sh*gging and drinking (hello Motley Crue, I’m looking at you) far more irritating, but that’s probably because  I never aspired to be “rock’n’roll”. I always related far more to bands like Genesis & Pink Floyd. Like Mike Rutherford complaining that he could never make a proper cup of tea in America, now that’s living. 😁

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In my experience metal lyrics tend (though not always) to celebrate the protagonist's agency*.  He is often about to do something; something possibly glorious, possibly evil, possibly involving a member of the opposite sex. On many occasions the metallist is in a state of open revolt the better to pursue his aim of enhancing his individuality.

At other times the practitioner metallique invites like-minded people to join him in subsuming their individuality in a celebratory communal experience, possibly involving rituals of a bacchanalian or shamanistic or highly destructive nature. On rare occasions the metallista embraces melancholy but it doesn't usually last for long. Consider Mr John 'Ozzie' Osbourne's chef d'oeuvre Paranoid where he signs off with the encouragingly positive couplet:

"I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could but it's too late"

Even in his own personal pit of despair Ozzie exhorts the rest of us to enjoy ourselves. I think we can all learn from that

By contrast, the white boy pop idols de nos jours mostly stink the place up with their whiny, self-pitying lyrics and their self-abasing paeans to unobtainable young women who in some way excite in the performer a sense of inferiority and general helplessness.

Consider Mr James Blunt's hit You're beautiful. Some thirty four years separates the song from Paranoid and what a difference. The final couplet cosily embraces futility and failure:

'But it's time to face the truth
I will never be with you'

You're beautiful is now fifteen years old yet in many ways it set a template for so many young, white, male singer-songwriters. Depressed? Check. A failure? Check. Unshaggable? Check. 

Perhaps this is how young men today go about the business of soliciting a mercy fück? Perhaps these neo-pubescent milksops think that gaining access to the mossy bower requires fervent demonstrations of 'sensitivity' and 'consideration'?

Or perhaps these simpering lads are simply resigned to the fact that 'they' (by whom they actually mean 'you, the listener' because these pop stars are prolly getting laid left, right and centre whereas I expect ordinary, healthy young chaps are lucky to get a sniff of it, 'Dark days for a cöcksman, dark days indeed', as Mr David Coverdale observed) are doomed to go their graves with their cherries un-popped.

Frankly, were I to be forced to listen to a specific genre of lyrics I would choose metal over white boy pop any day of the week including Sundays. Proper Metal is a gourmand's dish of raw, bloody steak liberally dowsed with alcohol, mind-altering substances and tiger spünk. White boy pop lyrics are - by comparison - a sad little Tesco Basics egg sandwich. 

On a more specific point, the sword and sorcery sub-genre is nothing new in popular culture and plays into the general rampancy of 'metal as it should be'. My old pal and wing man Johnny Tolkien was wont to remark: 'What I really like on a Saturday night is a good old-fashioned goblin'.

 

* Not his booking agency, obvs. I mean his capacity to act with autonomy, possibly in the furtherance of achieving his personal goals

Edited by skankdelvar
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We walk hand in hand with horror, we ride side by side with
death, we are the warriors at the end of time
Over poisoned crystal deserts, where the ruined towers shout
We march towards our dying scarlet sun.
Death Death to life! Death! Death to time!
We bring sweet destruction now to everything.
In our mirrored flashing armour, in our secret, hideous
helms, we are the Angels of your ruin.
And we climb obsidian mountains, on our final, dreadful quest,
Crossing lakes which cry with pain as we pass by.
Death to all things living!
Holy death will cleanse the world!
Death, our standard! Death, our only joy.
We are the Warriors at the end of time.
Death to air and fire and water
Death to light and earth and sound
Death to anger, love and sadness
Death to death... and time... and apace.
On the dead horses our dead riders,
Seek the last retreats of life.
Life betrayed us and we slew it
Corpses locked in battle, dancing at the End of Time

 

Works for me 🤣

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37 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Works for me

Me too. 

 

46 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

I almost think it's less puerile that early Pantera made the offer to any who would, to Ride Their Rocket.

Quite so.

It's all a question of attitude really. For argument's sake, let us put ourselves in the position of a young man of limited means and few prospects of advancement.

* White boy pop instructs him to sit in a little puddle of depression and await his statutory püssy-whipping.

* Metal invites him to Unleash The Thunder And Ride The Train To Insanity City Where All The Hot Chicks Are

Who among us would not choose the latter course of action? Yet to do so nowadays is to invite obloquy from progressives everywhere. I say 'P'shaw'.

I think this may all be an Anglo-Saxon thing; a casual scrutiny of the AC/DC music vid Live at River Plate shows tens of thousands of happy young Latin Americans of both sexes going crazy fücking apeshit, heaving back and forth like a tidal wave and clearly intent on some serious post-gig coitus. They haven't got a problem with the lyrics.

You just wouldn't get that here which is a serious problem when you think about the birth rate and population replacement.

Edited by skankdelvar
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4 minutes ago, Unknown_User said:

I have long loved PUSA, but they're always banging on about insects and other animals. In nearly every song.

Lots of great tunes and good entertainment value though.

I think you're being a bit unfair, they're only on about animals and insects in most of the GOOD songs.

Anyway, some of it is metaphor. you're just not *getting* it, man 🤣

Anyway everyone DOES want to be Naked and Famous and we're definitely not going to maaaaakkkkeeee eeeeeiiiiiiit,

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6 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

While philosophers have pondered the question for millennia, the answer to the enduring 'why are we all here?' is clearly some combination of alcohol and heavy metal.

You have identified the tension which exists between the two competing impulses which sit at the core of what it means to be human.

On the one hand, white boy pop: prissy, pursed-lipped self-repression and craven obeisance to artificial social constructs

On the other, Metal: a priapic, uninhibited celebration of the animal instinct and all which flows therefrom

Basically, Mr Ed Sheeran vs Mr Bon Scott; a contest with only one conceivable victor.

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On 15/10/2019 at 18:20, 4000 said:

Like Mike Rutherford complaining that he could never make a proper cup of tea in America, now that’s living. 😁

Ginger Baker, surely?

One thing in this country that really bothers me
Is the inability of yanks to make a good cup of tea
Instructions are printed on the teabag
But either they can't read
Or they think it's a gag
"Pour boiling water over the tea"
How simple and clear can the instructions be?
They bring you a cup with a lemon slice
And an unopened tea bag beside it -- how nice
And a pot of water, and it may be hot
But boiling it isn't, so tea you have not
Why can't we
Get our tea
We need tea
To set us free
It's boiling water that brings out tea's flavour
With a dash of milk you've a real brew to savour
They drink luke warm brown water that looks like gnat pee
And it's got nothing to do with a good cup of tea
"Pour boiling water over the tea"
How simple and clear can the instructions be?
"Pour boiling water over the tea"
"Pour boiling water over the tea"

 

Edited by Rich
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On 15/10/2019 at 22:33, Rich said:

Ginger Baker, surely?

One thing in this country that really bothers me
Is the inability of yanks to make a good cup of tea
Instructions are printed on the teabag
But either they can't read
Or they think it's a gag
"Pour boiling water over the tea"
How simple and clear can the instructions be?
They bring you a cup with a lemon slice
And an unopened tea bag beside it -- how nice
And a pot of water, and it may be hot
But boiling it isn't, so tea you have not
Why can't we
Get our tea
We need tea
To set us free
It's boiling water that brings out tea's flavour
With a dash of milk you've a real brew to savour
They drink luke warm brown water that looks like gnat pee
And it's got nothing to do with a good cup of tea
"Pour boiling water over the tea"
How simple and clear can the instructions be?
"Pour boiling water over the tea"
"Pour boiling water over the tea"

 

Nah, Mike says it in an interview. Somewhere else (possibly his autobiography) he makes some reference to the best thing about touring being clean sheets and & cocoa. Or something like that. That’s my kind of rock star. 😉

Edited by Rich
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