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Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter and symmetry of expression.
I was driving home and this song was playing with the lyrics
Are you rising up? I thought that I lost me
After all this time, I couldn’t remember me
and something obvious came to me. When I’m listening to music with lyrics, it tends to be very vague, never concrete and more of approaching a feeling. There are obviously other cases, where things are more explicit but what I mean to say is there’s more of a sense that I am bringing something of myself to complete the lyrics, rather than it being something fully explicit and surface value (for example, lyrics that would be some civil war facts or a listing of receipt purchases.) Even coming up with extremely generic lyrics, something like “I was walking down the street…” seems to immediately buck the listener and the lyricist to reach for something more abstract.
With the above lyrics there’s also use of pronouns in place of proper nouns. I’d wager pronouns are more common that proper nouns lyrically?
Booth Scene in Before Sunrise
In Random I was thinking of the moment in that date where you can allow a random song to speak for you. As the above very obvious point was in my head, I thought of this scene where “Come Here” by Kath Bloom plays in a listening booth.
No, I’m not impossible to touch
I have never wanted you so much
Come here, come here
There’s no voiced dialogue here but certainly a form of expression and communication is occurring, particularly with the song lyrics. There’s an exciting tension, and push pull and it only occurs fairly early in the movie.
What is so good about this scene is how “inside” parts of it feels. When he is looking at her, she isn’t looking at him (her eyes), but in her mind she sees him looking at her. It is imagination and reality. It plays out like a dance and both know where it can head. The lyrics are woven into the moment.
I like to feel his eyes on me when I look away
When I think of someone, and a smile might bloom on my face. My eyes gaze off because I’m seeing something in my head. You see a hint of what is sincerely inside, normally locked away and inaccessible to all, on the outside in a real way.
When in Love
When in love, I will run to music. I can spend hours just listening to the right songs, that have taken on a different feel.
Lip syncing
When people sing they will often lip sync. The artist’s voice becomes their voice, or it seems like the artist’s voice emerges from within them. Now it’s popular on social media to do a performance where you sync your voice to the artist exactly.
The artist becomes an important role here, as this universal channel or conduit for art and speech. A voice with many mouths. People might relate to the lyrics, so the push and pull between the creator is there.
Looking up Lyrics
At times I’ve looked up lyrics, often after listening to the track for tens of times, and been disappointed with the canonical lyrics. My unsure completion of things carried something else, and finding out what was precisely was said makes for a worse song.
NOTE
Mondegreen
Some overlap here. “mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning”
Burial
I’ve always liked Burial for his emotionally resonant electronic songs. A large part of this is done through his use of sampling and vocal processing.
No true ground for the lyrical content actually exists to the listener. Occasionally the sample origins are unknown. Occasionally they will be covers of smaller artists on youtube, copies of the originals. Regardless they’ll be chopped up, and so constructed that it lands with something that feels emotional.
There’s some completion done by the ears of the listener. One example of this that comes to mind is the Paradise Circus segment listed on certain lyric sites as
You can’t follow me, I fell on the way
But I’m with you such a better thing
which at various times I’ll hear as “I’ve come all the way, but I’m beside you - so don’t be afraid” or “but I’m beside you, such a beat up thing.”
What this does for me, is that after listening to his songs various times over the years, is that when I come to it my mind latches onto an appropriate association that feels resonant with me.
Oklou Gravity
Oklou’s Gravity has another example. Various people will interpret
I can see the fall, from the bow The sun is rising up, arousing me All the people falling in love I see them break with the gravity
with others omitting love entirely and following the gravity theme
I can see the ball from above. The sun is rising up, arousing me. All the people falling below, I see them playing with the gravity.
Her accented English speech also contributes here.
The Wind-Up Bird - This
In college I’d listen to this song off the 2005 Whips album. The “lyrical” content of this song is mostly a very emotional voicemail sample, of his ex during a breakup. We hear “I love you a lot” and what sounds like “monster”, which then is progressively warped to intelligibility and electronic noise.
Risk
A 2009 report found that, in terms of potential exposure to malware , lyrics-related searches and searches containing the word “free” are the most likely to have risky results from search engines, both in terms of average risk of all results, and maximum risk of any result.