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


Barking Spiders

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9 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

I didn't pick on pop as everyone knows it's vacuous, disposable and targeted mainly at kids while hard rock and metal are targeted mainly at introverted spotty teenagers.  

Fixed. And speaking as someone who likes lots of metal and was one.😉 

 

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Utterly meaningless, utterly brilliant...Millionaire by Queens of the Stone Age...

 

 

Dead blow with the life from the low
I'll be massive conquistador
Give me sword, show me the door
Metal heavy, shocked at the core

Gimme toro, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more
Pressurize, neutralize
Deep fried, gimme some more

Space flunky, four on the floor
Fortified with the liquor store
This one's down, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more

Shrunken head, I love to adore
B movie, gimme some gore
Gimme toro, gimme some more
B movie, gimme some gore

Gimme toro, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more

 
 
 
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Right from the beginnings of heavy metal the lyrics have been macho, vacuous and devoid of relevancy or social comment:

Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerer of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds...
Oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah!
Now in darkness, world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more war pigs have the power,
hand of god has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, god is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercy for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings...
Oh lord, yeah!
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I know we don't fit the genre but on the topic of 'meaningless' lyrics let me present to you verse 1 and 2 of the SL&G song Close to the Sea - see if you can work out what inspired the lyric:

Pinned to a day
Striped like a cage
Suits you in grey

Made to withstand
Too many plans
Measured in sand

 

 

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19 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

 

I return to my contention that Mr James Blunt and his ilk feigned their pathetic uselessness

Whereas Mr Steven Patrick Morrissey was, I'm sure, 100% genuine in his :

I go and I stand on my own, and I leave on my own, and I go home and I cry and I want to die - How Soon Is Now? 1984 The Smiths

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I'd rather put up with schlocky boy meets girl/man/transgender person/donkey,  falls in lurve yada blah than all that self-empowerment/be strong  tripe that pervades many  songs, not just rock but also pop, going way back to I Will Survive. I picked on that dire Halestorm track for that reason.

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9 minutes ago, Twigman said:

Whereas Mr Steven Patrick Morrissey was, I'm sure, 100% genuine in his :

I go and I stand on my own, and I leave on my own, and I go home and I cry and I want to die - How Soon Is Now? 1984 The Smiths

Insufferable and pretentious as he often comes across (especially in more recent years...), you couldn't really accuse him of grinding through the usually cliches:

I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar... from the same - at least it's different. No team of nine lyricists trained in manufacturing chart hits is likely to come up with something comparable.

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3 minutes ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

Insufferable and pretentious as he often comes across (especially in more recent years...), you couldn't really accuse him of grinding through the usually cliches

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge Smiths fan - I'm not so keen on Mr Morrissey, the man, he's a silly billy but I did enjoy a Smiths lyric:

His take on first love is great too: 

It's time the tale were told
Of how you took a child
And you made him old
You made him old
Reel around the fountain
Slap me on the patio
I'll take it now
Oh
Fifteen minutes with you
Well, I wouldn't say no
Oh, people said that you were virtually dead
And they were so wrong
 
Reel Around The Fountain - 1984
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29 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

I'd rather put up with schlocky boy meets girl/man/transgender person/donkey,  falls in lurve yada blah than all that self-empowerment/be strong  tripe that pervades many  songs, not just rock but also pop, going way back to I Will Survive. I picked on that dire Halestorm track for that reason.

No lack of teenage rebellion lyrics there 🙂

We're all wasted,
And we're not going home tonight.

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I'd like to humbly submit the below for the defence

Converge - A Single Tear

I was so naive
Fearful of the substantive
Of the greying days
Of carrying endless weight
And what it really meant
To truly mean something
To really be someone who could be loved
 
So lost in darkness
In and out of selfishness
Hoarding all my dreams
Was just no way to be
Then you gifted me such a precious thing
A chance to be someone who deserved love
 
When I heard
A single tear
Your cry ring out
A single tear
It showed me what
A single tear
Real strength could be
A single tear
 
As a single teardrop fell
And was swallowed by the sea
You outshined the best there was
Rewrote who I could be
You outshined the best there was
Rewrote who I could be
When I held you for the first time
I knew I had to survive
When I held you for the first time
I knew I had to survive
 
As a single teardrop fell
As a single teardrop fell
As a single teardrop fell
As a single teardrop fell
 
When I heard
A single tear
Your cry ring out
A single tear
It showed me what
A single tear
Real strength could be
A single tear
 
A single tear
A single tear
A single tear
A single tear
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3 hours ago, Twigman said:

I thought that was more Shoegaze territory

That didn’t exist in my day. I was listening to heavy rock - NOT metal! - in the late 70s and I started playing at 17, in 1980. To me, Iron Maiden are a new band. Seriously! I remember the first time they were on top of the pops. 

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On 15/10/2019 at 16:38, Lozz196 said:

Take a listen to The Macc Lads, lyrical genius imo but after that any song sounds meaningful.

Quite. Anyone who can rhyme 'Macclesfield' with 'knackers feeled' should be in with a shout to topple Carol Ann Duffy as Poet Laureate.... 🙂

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I'd like to humbly submit some lyrics of my own to illustrate just how deep musical verse can be (imagine it intoned in a Manchester accent):

1. My mate Dave, he turned to me
With great portent and evident glee
“There’s a storm a-comin’” quoth he
“There’s thunder in them hills you’ll see

2. “There’s a rumble in the jungle, a one-gun salute
“More tea vicar? Me flatus is acute
“You thought I couldn’t play the Tibetan noseflute
“I think I’ve just spattered me 3 piece suit”

There she blows!

3. I said to him “just be direct, call a spade a spade,
“you’ll get respect.
“Don’t just blame your dialect,
“that’s an excuse that I reject
“even if your kecks are now brown-flecked,
“maybe now you’ll be more circumspect

4. He said “You can’t hold what you haven’t got in your hand
“better an empty house than a bad tenant
“get out and walk, I should be on Grandstand!
“that one’d drown out Barbara Streisand”

There she blows!

5. I heard it’d all ended in tears.
He’d done summat daft and confirmed me fears
He’d been practicing a trick to impress his mates
Showing what’d happen when his abdomen inflates
And a match is applied to the rear of his pants
However, he set fire to the curtain
And soon the whole house has gone for a burton
Now he lives in the park with a can of strong lager
And that’s the end of this sorry saga

There she blows!

🤘😀

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I think that's almost certainly the case; furthermore the sweep of the narrative arc and the thematic focus recall another sublime high water mark in the librettist's art, Dan's Underpant. Marvellous.

More lager, anyone?

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On 16/10/2019 at 11:36, kendall said:

I've always liked the lyrics that Meshuggah come up with.  This gem is from an awesome track called Closed Eye Visuals.

Unbound to the pale and lifeless day by the multi-colored, multiform
A spinning anti-dream unthought. Exceeding the obsolete reality
Overheated inner shape generator. Blowing every cerebral fuse
Insanity filtered and systematized. Feeding the tools of mind abuse
Mind signal transmission peaked, distorted, bent, unrestrained
etc etc
 
 

I think the fact that Meshuggah's lyricists aren't native English speakers, yet they decide to write and sing in English, helps them achieve their "words picked out of a hat and arranged into a sentence" lyrical style. 

Edited by Mastodon2
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4 hours ago, Muzz said:

Quite. Anyone who can rhyme 'Macclesfield' with 'knackers feeled' should be in with a shout to topple Carol Ann Duffy as Poet Laureate.... 🙂

Don’t forget they managed to fit George Michael and menstrual cycle into another of their songs.

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1 hour ago, Mastodon2 said:

I think the fact that Meshuggah's lyricists aren't native English speakers, yet they decide to write and sing in English, helps them achieve their "words picked out of a hat and arranged into a sentence" lyrical style. 

I usually don't care much for the lyrics but I dig Meshuggah's ones. I think it's just talent... The Melvins are native speakers but they have the kind of writing you say, "words picked out of a hat and arranged into a sentence", more focused on sounds/suggestion than descriptive/narrative. They use fake/distorted words too. Or with distorted meanings (nouns used as verbs etc) 

(Meshuggah are more descriptive and less dadaistic IMO, but still...) 

One would expect not native speakers to do something like that almost naturally, but actually here in Italy I don't know anyone with that kind of writing, with that weird and abstract imagination, like someone who feels free from the constraints of "proper" wording and logical sense. 

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