Songs, words, singers

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

We get feelings from the musical sounds of words before we differentiate words from those same sounds into intellectual meaning. It may or maynot have anything to do with being "wired" differently. Some musical sounds stimulate the intellect (even without accompanying words).

So you don't know any more than I do

MG

Except, we hear sound before we know what it means.

And spend the rest of our lives trying to work out what it means, if anything.

MG

[GA Russell]

I too share Noj's experience. When I was in high school, I enjoyed all of the few instrumental hits played on the pop radio stations. To this day, I far prefer instrumentals.

That said, three of my very favorite new albums of 2007 were by singers - Janice Friedman, Jan Shapiro and John Vance. They each have their own threads. I'm sure that I've played them more than the new instrumental albums I've gotten this year.

I imagine it says something, though I'm not sure what, that all three are available from CDBaby rather than the major retailers.

[Joe G]

One knock against words in music - often enough I want to leave words and their meaning behind, and go straight for a feeling beyond language.

Also, there have been quite a few times where the singer and the song are powerful, but the lyrics are not nearly as elevated, which leaves me wanting. When it all comes together, it's powerful indeed.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

One knock against words in music - often enough I want to leave words and their meaning behind, and go straight for a feeling beyond language.

Also, there have been quite a few times where the singer and the song are powerful, but the lyrics are not nearly as elevated, which leaves me wanting. When it all comes together, it's powerful indeed.

Ah yes - it's harder to get everything right when there are more things to go wrong. A very basic point.

MG

[JSngry]

One knock against words in music - often enough I want to leave words and their meaning behind, and go straight for a feeling beyond language.

Also, there have been quite a few times where the singer and the song are powerful, but the lyrics are not nearly as elevated, which leaves me wanting. When it all comes together, it's powerful indeed.

I am gradually realizing that this "feeling beyond language" is not a function of words or the lack thereof, but instead is the result of the performer and/or listener being willing to let go and simply "go there". And that can be done with or without words, I think, as well as with words that are on the surface mundane-ish. Hell, most of our so-called "standards" have lyrics that are at best middle-middlebrow ruminations about life and love in not particularly complicated forms. And yet, a good singer can make them into something profound. And/or they can become something profound to a listener who is willing and/or ready and or able to receive those lyrics as a trigger for something deeper within themself.

It's easy to "blame" (and this is not what you are doing, Joe, but I have heard it done in other places at other times) things like words or vocalists or lots of things for hampering this ability to "break free", when the fact of the matter is, I think, internal and specific to each performer or listener. This is certainly not to say that some lyrics and/or singers are not more..."earthbound" than others, lord knows better than that. But I will suggest that we all are better off by first questioning our response to any input before we cast aspersions upon that input itself. "Blame" is seldom unilateral, quiet as we might like to keep it sometimes!

Really, this is yet another variant on the "it's not the instrument, it's the music" and "it's not the song, it's the player" discussions we've had here over the years about Why I Don't Like Instruments ABC or Songs XYZ. The difference here is that the voice is about as baic an instrument as you can have, the so-called "original instrument". The ends to which this instrument have been put have been as glorious as they have been horrific, but I also wonder if our individual responses and/or predispositions to such a basic, universal, primal, even, tool of expression/communication might not be an equally primal indicator of our individual psyche. It seems that we might have a range here that runs from "I love to hear my baby call my name" to "I love to hear my baby, just not talking" to "I love to know that my baby is there, as long as she don't make noise about it" to "My baby? Eh, whatever."!

As long as it's all honest, it's all good. But honesty's a bitch sometimes, doncha' know...