The Fountains of Wayne. Adam Schlesinger is on the right. Stereogum.com
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger, Updated from our 2013 post. Please read the comments.
Going back in music history to Gregorian chants, Mozart operas, and Frank Sinatra singing with Tommy Dorsey, it was always important for the songs’ lyrics to make sense and to be clearly heard. Sinatra was a fanatic about phrasing and pronunciation of words.
Lyricists always compose songs so that they tell a story (as in Broadway musicals) or express ideas (as in “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” from South Pacific) or consist of poetry (as in “You are the angel glow that lights the stars” from “All the Things You Are”)
However, since the rock era of recent times, the words, if you can clearly hear them, sometimes are unclear as to their meaning. Which brings me to the late Adam Schlesinger, a successful modern-day songwriter who wrote an editorial in the New York Times (2013) asking whether song lyrics needed to tell a story or even to make any sense at all.
I was fascinated. Adam Schlesinger had won Grammy and Emmy awards along with Tony and Oscar nominations for his song writing.
In the editorial, he said, “Lately I’ve been getting more interested in focusing on the overall sound and texture of song, and worrying less about the logic of the words.”
So, at last, someone who could explain to me why I am so often baffled by modern song lyrics.
What’s the Story NY Times link
THE CLICK FIVE: “Just the Girl” written by Adam Schlesinger
Here is one of Adam Schlesinger’s songs performed by “The Click Five.” It’s a simple story with understandable lyrics. Note that Schlesinger is from New Jersey and was one of the founders of the group “Fountains of Wayne.”
And here is a song I love, but the lyrics are incomprehensible. It is by a group called Beirut. The song is “A Sunday Smile.”
I stand corrected in that it is the “National Anthem” and not “American the Beautiful”. Either way “Ocean Grove has got talent ! “
As someone that still tries to write songs (I haven’t been out in the music world as much as used to), I think that I am basically just paranoid. I don’t want to be too direct about who/what I am talking about, but then there is the temptation to add one line that kind of gives it away (if people are even listening to the lyrics.).
Lately I’ve become more attracted to lyrics than I was in the past. I feel like some of the musicians that I know definitely don’t focus on lyrics. The singer is distanced from his/her (usually a him) song. I used to be attracted to this, but after a while I feel a need to connect to some lyrics and I want to connect to others through my own. Some songs need it and some don’t.
Dick: You know that standards of art are constantly changing. I think that Schlesinger is using words, as you said, like paint, but in a way that is different from the traditional. (like Jackson Pollack did with paint) So the effect can be artistic and meaningful even if the result doesn’t look like the usual narrative use of language.
Hi PAUL,
I read that blog and really do not fully understand Schlesinger’s premise. I think it would be just as if a painter started throwing paint on a canvas without any concept and then looking and possibly seeing some meaning in the splashes of color and make a painting. Almost like giving a paint brush to a monkey. It might look nice to the average viewer but most want some emotional impact with art as with song.
Admittedly, I am not versed with the pop culture of song, although rap seems to give a message and the beat is congruent to the message (there is no or little melody). In opera if there is a sad aria, it sounds sad or soulful.
The example in your blog mentioned “You’ve got to be Carefully Taught.” The rhythm, melody and feeling projected quite fits the lyrics even though, according to Hammerstein’s daughter, that her father, Oscar, wrote the lyrics according to
what the story was and was totally independent to the music of Richard Rodgers.
Then, I suppose, they sat together and make adjustments so that the words and music made sense together. Just goes to say, to each his own, but the important point is, as pertains to that article” Is it Art?
Rich, I am there every Sat. night and I never heard America the Beautiful sung in the Auditorium prior to concerts. They do sing the National Anthem though.
Side musical note:
For those of you that visit the Grove try and catch the opening musical act prior to the Saturday Night Concerts during the season. All you got to do is hang in the Park outside and hear all those wonderful voices inside singing “America the Beautiful” to get the evening under way……………….
Paul, the all time most misunderstood song lyric is Richard Berry’s “Louie, Louie”. Even had an FBI investigation for obscenity in the lyrics. They didn’t find any, probably because they couldn’t understand them. Far cry from today when every other word in songs is an obscenity.