Lots of people never listen to lyrics! Especially boys! I like to begin blog posts with wide sweeping, unresearched generalisations about large portions of the population and end the sentences with exclamation marks!

Listening to lyrics can be a bit of hinderance, it can stop you liking otherwise perfectly good music. First example: the jazz standard 'How High the Moon'. It has the worst lyrics of all time in the history of the world ever! A completely nonsensical ream of words that rhyme and are vaguely associated with romance. No narrative, no plot, no characters...the song makes no sense (and Ella Fitzgerald does it no favours when she scraps the lyrics and instead improvises her own, she managed somehow to make even less sense).

'Somewhere there's music
How faint the tune
Somewhere there's heaven
How high the moon
There is no moon above
When love is far away too
Till it comes true
That you love me as I love you'

...Say What!? Yes somewhere there is music, you are singing this song so music is right here so you are making music, do the lyrics mean to say 'I hear music when I see you' 'wherever you are there's music' 'falling in love makes me hear music'...I have no idea, and why is the tune faint? Is the narrator only a little bit in love, is that why the love is far away? Unrequited love makes the moon move further away? We can probably guess what the lyricist wanted to say in this song (only because the sentiment is such a cliché) but he never actually says it. I'm assuming what he meant to say was something along the lines of 'would you please love me back coz that'd be great and the moon would shine brighter and I'd hear music and it'd be like heaven on earth', but he never bothers to actually tell that story, and instead just uses a few key words and hopes we'd fill in the details. I'll show you exactly how this song was written:

Someone made a list that looked something like this:
Love
Dove
Above
Tune
Moon
Soon
Room
True
Blue
You
Too


He then chose sentences at random from a chick lit novel and replaced randomly chosen words with ones from the list.
Job Done. Another day at the office.


But there are loads of great recordings of this tune, you just have to make your brain forget it understands English so you don't notice the lyrics so much and just hear them as abstract sounds to enjoy them.

So after that long intro I'll get to my point. Here are some albums with great lyrics, and/or great lyrical delivery. If you're the kind of person that winces every time you hear this then you might enjoy some of these (they're not in order of preference, and not necessarily my favourite, just three off the top of my head):


First a jazz one:
The Newest Sound Around
Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake

Jeanne Lee knows how to deliver a lyric. 'Loverman' is performed almost exactly as written in a drawn out monotonous tone, starkly simple it hits you with the melancholic frustration of a woman who knows nothing of love who sits at home all day waiting for a man she's never met. Lyrics of 'Evil Blues' could be a cliché if it wasn't for her believability (and of course Ran Blake's kick ass 'Monkish' piano playing...I love the beginning of his solo, just three cantankerous notes sung out timed to perfection)


Next:
Knuckle Down
Ani DiFranco

I'm gonna let her speak for herself:

'I love the way your stories seem to fall from your lips
With just enough slobber so it sparkles and drips
The way you hang the whole room on a word
Like a little stick in the beak of a bird

First we touched fingers and then we touched toes
Then my army surrendered
My government overthrown
I threw myself a little role reversal and followed you home
Just dying to be chewed
The dog was chosen by the bone'






She's got the story telling and imagery of folk, the raw energy of punk and some unbelievable guitar skills, there is nothing not to love about this woman. I saw her live recently and you could see that like all great super heroes she uses her power for good and had a load of tunes about important political issues and, one of my favourites, a tune about how promiscuity is an important part of growing up and learning who you are and you shouldn't be ashamed of it. What is not to love about this woman



And lastly:
Trampoline
Miriam Ingram

There are some tunes on here with lyrics I hate, but the ones I love I really really love. They're crunchy and taste of metal, they're also completely melded with the soundscapes she creates and don't necessarily work so well in print so I won't do them a disservice here, instead go listen to 'Inhale' and 'Winter' (can't find them online so you might just have to go support an Irish artist with a trip to Tower Records).

What's with the lyrics

I’ve had this blog for a while without really knowing what to do with it so I’ve come to the well worn conclusion, ‘write what you know’. What I know is lyrics, more specifically my own lyrics (I should know them I wrote them after all).


So I’m gonna start with Seasnail. Here it goes…


The same characters pop up in jazz standards all the time. There’s the woman who’s waiting around for the man she loves either because he isn’t treatin’ her right or because she hasn’t met him yet (black coffee, weeping willow, mean to me, lover man…etc) and the lesser heard woman who’s in love and he loves her back (all the love songs like the nearness of you, oh watcha doin to me…).


The feminist in me cannot stand this first character, the woman waiting around for some fictional or no good man. Part of me thinks maybe the reason the character is so prevalent in jazz standards is because jazz began in brothels and possibly the character was a useful and lucrative one for the Madames and prostitutes to adopt. But apparently the prostitues at the time were very powerful figures, feared for their vodoo powers and their agility with a razor so that belies that idea (I’m not an expert on this, in fact I’m totally winging this theory but I think the musicians who played in the brothels wrote songs about their patrons the madames so this powerful female character is pretty common in the early blues tunes like: sea lion woman and evil blues).


But maybe I’m reading too much into things as usual, the story is hardly exclusive to jazz standards as proved by the Penelope in the Odysee and every fairy tale princess that’s ever been.


So the character gets on my nerves. Like in ‘ain’t misbehaving’ who is this guy that has Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, two of the most powerful sounding women I’ve ever heard, moping at home all day? and why is staying out past eight considered misbehaving? Or Lover Man, if Sarah Vaughan longs so badly to try something she’s never had why doesn’t she just go out and get some?
But after all my protestations, Seasnail is a ‘waiting-round-for-love’ song. Hopefully one that breaks with some of the tradition. I might be waiting, but I will not wait quietly. Waiting will not be a passive state of inertia. Waiting will be an empowering choice. Contrary as usual the first line in my ‘waitin-round’ song is:

‘I won’t wait for you…’

The contrariness is intentional. What I mean is ‘I don’t have to wait’, ‘I could be writing a not-waiting-round-for-love song if I wanted’, or more precisely I’ll wait on my terms, because then I go on to describe the ways I will not wait…I will not wait:

‘porcelain faced
a *willow pattern plate
in this tent I’ve made from your love letters.

And then the line I love to sing

‘coz I’m so sick of love letters’.

I spend most of my days singing about a world entirely inhabited by weeping willows, starlight, faces that flower and daisy petals to sail away on** so it’s a nice refreshing break to sing about being a horny devil who’s sick of love letters. No matter how romantic or poetic a love letter is it couldn’t possibly compare to the reality of having your love there with you, even if the reality is usually messier (I mean you can’t exactly argue about who’s turn it is to wash the dishes in a love letter).

‘So I’ll wait for you the only way I know how,
Like a bride on fire
Like a statue come alive
Like a horny devil drunk on love and crazy for a fight’


I’ve already decided what I’m gonna write about next time. It’s something I get asked about a lot ‘who are the songs about’ or ‘they’re so personal, don’t you mind getting up on stage and telling everyone your business’…so tune in next week, or possibly a little later on that, whenever I get round to writing it really.


*you mightn’t know what a willow pattern plate is but you probably own one, or maybe your granny does. Willow pattern is that blue on white oriental pattern you see on crockery. It tells some ancient oriental love story about a woman who is about to marry a man she doesn’t love when the man of her dreams shows up and they flee together. I can’t remember what happens in the end, I think maybe her father sends an assassin after them and they die and turn into birds, metaphorically at least. The point is it’s a very romantic traditional love story where the man comes along and saves the lady in distress.


**name that tune: willow weep for me, stella by starlight, my shining hour, stariway to the stars.