Dancing About Architecture:
Moon, June, Spoon
Words: Scott Harrell

Two and a half decades ago, not long after I'd given up memorizing the proper hand positions for playing Andrés Segovia in favor of strumming the four chords my fingers could actually negotiate, I wrote my first song. It was called “Ban The Bomb.” I was ten, and knew as much about the '60s peace movement as data-compression algorithms, but what the hell. From what I'd heard, rock music was about either sex or politics, and puberty hadn't kicked in yet, so there you go.

The chorus went:

“Ban the bomb, let's keep our hair on our heads/Ban the bomb, why not use guns instead/I don't want my skin turning red…”

Holy fucking wow. 

I've written a lot of shitty lyrics in my time. Anybody who's penned more than three songs has written some shitty lyrics; it just goes with the territory. Some of those things you thought were profound or funny or perfectly indicative of the way you were feeling at the time are inevitably going to sound stupid, embarrassing or just plain wrong somewhere down the line, be it years later or just as soon as the high tapers off. Hell, some of 'em are stillborn out of the gate, and we just don't know or care right that second.

I think that most songwriters get better as they go, that trial and error counts for as much as experience and that talent is a thing that can be honed, refined. I also think that even the best lyricist will occasionally toss off something wince-inducing, no matter how consistently good he or she gets.

But a big part of that is the creator reviewing his or her own work. Musicians often marvel at the stuff their fans consider awesome; the things listeners love can cause the artists to shudder.

So how important are lyrics, really?

Honestly, I don't know. All I know is this: I'm a guy who makes some money putting words together, and makes no money putting words together with music, and I still don't know all the words to some of my favorite songs.

That's one of the great things about music, that you can feel it for a number of different reasons. You can love the lyrics. You can love the melody. You can love the groove. If you're one of those people who are always looking for something new rather than something catchy, you can love the innovative lack of anything that remotely resembles lyrics or melody or groove. (Also, quit being a fucking over-it snob.) If you're one of those people who are always looking for instrumental virtuosity, you can love the way the drummer or the guitarist or the bass player tastefully blends reinforcing the song with total shreddage. (Also, quit pretending you don't listen to anything other than Muse and Dream Theater.)

It doesn't happen very often with other art forms. Not too many people buy a Goya print for its lovely shade of orange-red in spite of the fact that the image of a titan eating a guy's head creeps them out a little.

So, lyrics are just one of several elements that might make a song attractive to the listener. A song doesn't need killer lyrics to be great, and shitty lyrics won't necessarily render a tune inaudible. But that doesn't mean shitty lyrics can’t kill a song; in fact, shitty lyrics are a big reason why so many commercially successful pop, rock and hip-hop tunes suck. When songwriting becomes a purely commercial enterprise, more construction than expression, a sort of emotional Mad Lib, the lyrics are often so one-dimensional and predictably trite in their attempt to resonate with the widest audience possible that they're insulting to the more discerning or passionate fan. Some songwriters have a knack for pushing the right buttons. You might not be a laid-off dock walloper like Tommy, or an overworked diner waitress like Gina; that time you couldn't pay your TiVo bill isn't quite the same as an archetypal couple living on little else than love, but you can totally relate. What you generally get on the radio nowadays is a whole lot of “something something girl/something something world” and not much more.

Of course, that doesn't matter if all you're looking for is a three-minute distraction with a hummable hook. And that's totally cool. Though I can't help but wonder how much more effective, compelling or enduring those songs would be if the lyrics were as good as that catchy-ass melody, because my favorite songs are the ones where it all rises to the next level, and that shit can be powerful indeed. It can be life changing. And even when it's not quite that, it's always enough to inspire me to crank out some more of my own – the occasional shitty lyric be damned!