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EVERYBODY'S TALKING, BUT NO ONE SAYS A WORD
Rock lyrics are (too often) not poetry
Most rock music is lousy. And most rock lyrics are even worse. Here is the chorus of a song by the John Donnes of the rock world, REO Speedwagon; a song that captures the profound message most rock outfits have to convey:
I want to keep on loving youBecause it's the only thing I want to do
I don't want to sleep
I just want to keep
On loving you. Rock stars are not poets. Even if they publish books of poetry. Jim Morrison, John Lennon, and Jewel are not to be confused with Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley. There are a smattering of fine lyricists who may, at their best, be poetical. "Born to Run" was in my college poetry textbook, rightfully, but there are plenty of Bruce Springsteen songs that more closely resemble Matthew Sweet than Matthew Arnold. Bob Dylan writes very good lyrics, but even Mr. Zimmermann is no poet. Early rock musicians had nothing at all to say. They took all the mawkishness of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, but not of the wit and sensibility. These songs were about congregating at the hop, and rocking around the clock, and shaking -- there was, apparently, a whole lot of shaking going on. Then the 60s happened, that infernal decade people of my generation instinctively despise. Rock musicians of this era also had nothing to say, but unlike their predecessors, they fancied themselves poets. They wanted to put the Muse back into music. Morrison and Dylan were two of the biggest culprits, with north-of-the-border help from Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. But the least deserving of the Poet monniker, and the most eager to claim it, were four Liverpudlians with bad haircuts. The Beatles may have been bigger than Jesus Christ, but they weren't as poetic. I grant, reluctantly, that they are fine musicians who influenced rock more than any other artist. But they really didn't have much to say. Take the vaunted Last Line of the Last Album: And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make. Not exactly a rival to Keats's beauty-truth-truth-beauty line, is it? The hallmark of the "serious" rock lyricist is the paradox. Rather than babble about the subtleties of want, need, and love, he can employ a contradiction in order to seem deep, when in fact his words are, to fight paradox with paradox, profoundly shallow. The Who's Pete Townsend, no great wordsmith, poked fun at this convention in "5:15," a virtual litany of paradoxes: "grayly outrageous," "tightly undone," "sadly ecstatic," and so on. More examples: "They're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone." "The more you ignore me, the closer I get." "The search is over. You were with me all the while." "I'm worse at what I do best." "I woke up with a headache like my head against a board, twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before, and I went in seeking clarity." "You got to cry without weeping, taking without speaking, scream without raising your voice." Hey, I like a lot of those lyrics. They're fun, they're innocuous, and they're a big improvement over anything in the doo-wop era. But are Billy Joel, Morrissey, Survivor, the Indigo Girls, and Bono poets? I think not. As Plato said, "The wise man talks because he has something to say; the fool, because he has to say something." I'm not sure who Plato is, but I think they opened for the Speedwagon in '81.
By Greg Olear
061901