As I've stated many times before, my love of music isn't based heavily on an appreciation of lyrics. I normally see lyrics as being completely supplemental to the actual music, something to enhance the general mood or message of a song without ever being the true defining element. While I'll often have a general awareness of what is being said in a song, I'm usually much more interested in how the words are delivered, ie. vocal inflections, syllabic stresses, voice timbre, ways in which the presentation of the lyrics interact with the other song structures, than I am with the meaning of the words. What I should make clear though, is that this particular listening strategy isn't a result of some adopted abstract philosophical stance on what music is or how it should be appreciated. My downplaying the importance of lyrics is more a preference than a rule. To quote Kevin Costner in "The Postman", "It doesn't have to be this way". Not always. The reason I'm bringing all this up is that I'm currently listening to Smog's "Dress Sexy At My Funeral", a rare song in which I think the lyrics hold up their end of the bargain. The title is pretty self explanatory, the speaker telling his wife how she should act at his funeral, how she should "wink at the minister", flirt with his grieving brothers, and wear her "blouse undone to here" and "skirt split up to there". The words are clever, funny, and tongue-in-cheek. It's not a gimmicky joke type deal, as it's more something that you smile about than laugh at. In my estimation, the song is lyrically quite good. Anyway, I guess the main thing I'm trying to work out is why exactly the lyrics in a song like this strike a chord with me, while the words of most other songs pass me by. Right now, all I'm really certain of is what I don't like in lyrics. I think generally, the more an artist tries to imply that his or her lyrics are something that I should take to heart and look upon seriously, the more unessential they become. I tend to ignore most anything that's designed to be "thought-provoking" or tries too hard to communicate some sort of grand message about who we are and why we're here (kind of like my opinion of movies). I dislike when artists use vague or confusing imagery as an illusion to cover up the fact that they have absolutely nothing to say. I'm sure I could go on, but this little rant is beginning to look a bit too negative from my view, so I'm just going to stop here. Instead, I'm going to think about what it is that I see in the lyrics that I do like and determine whether or not there's any kind of rhyme or reason to such preferences. To be revisited at a later date (hopefully)...
