Music vs. Lyrics

Jemima Skala leads a roundtable on an age-old question. Daisy Alioto curates some links. 

Having grown up going to concerts and now earning a living from the music industry, the way I see it, you’re either a music person or a lyrics person. I am a music person. I have artists that I think of as my favorites, but probably couldn’t sing a song of theirs all the way through confidently at karaoke. However, I will know each note of that sax solo. My sister, born only a couple of years after me, is a lyrics person; she can listen to a song literally once and know all the words.

Standing in a crowd, surrounded by adoring fans screaming back at the stage, I have often felt lacking in some way—is this an intrinsic issue in me? I farmed my question out to others: do you consider yourself more of a music person or a lyrics person, and why?

Below are the replies of music journalists, DJs, musicians, editors, authors...people generally paid to think about music for a living. Their answers range from the deeply personal to deeply silly. It’s been comforting to see that I’m not alone in barely tuning in to lyrics, that there's actually a secret third element that I failed to consider, and that the best songs are undeniably more than the sum of their parts. — Jemima Skala

Alphonse Pierre

Music. The lyrics can be absolute bullshit if the music sounds pretty cool.

Aneesa Ahmed

It depends on the context - especially because I like a lot of electronic and instrumental genres that have no lyrics. I like seeing how the music and lyrics (if there are any) interlink, but I’m broadly more of a music person. I like music because I learn more about myself; I take time to notice how my body and mind react to certain sounds, how a drum pattern or chord makes me feel, and how the motion of the song pairs with the lyrics I’m listening to (if there are any). While I love lyrics too as rap is my favourite genre, the music and beat sets the pace for the lyrics and tells the story in movement. It’s what makes a song a song, for me.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Great lyrics will struggle to lift a song if the music is uninteresting, whereas plenty of songs with quite basic lyrics are brilliant. But if you've divorced the two things in your mind, you're not thinking about music in the right way. Lyrics are in dialogue with the music, and it's the music that gives them their meaning. It's why books of lyrics feel a bit pointless, even if they are strongly poetic on their own.

Cat Zhang

ooh this is hard — I’d say at this point in my life I’m more of a music person! I don’t often digest the words on the first listen. I’m more focused on my bodily reaction

Chal Ravens

If I may be a smart aleck, the choice between music or lyrics is not equivalent: music is the substrate on which a lyric feeds. Otherwise you’re asking me if I prefer poetry to song, which I certainly don’t. The thing about lyrics, even the great ones, is that they usually look quite stupid on the page. Lines that don’t scan, pointless repetition, all those free-floating “ooh babys”. You wouldn’t want to read a book of them, although a lot of songwriters have published theirs. My favourite lyric ever, off the top of my head, is this: “I was saying ‘let me out of here’ before I was even born / It’s such a gamble when you get a face”. Richard Hell is a poet.

But some of the greatest performers do things with rhyme, meter and allusion that can’t be captured outside of the song. Another favourite: “All these cars my kids inheriting when I think about it / All this money I can't cherish when I think about it”. Not a massively relatable statement, but in Future’s mouth it becomes a simply huge mood that I am somehow also participating in. (Another from the same album: “I’m tryna get high as I can, I’m tryna get high as I can, I’m tryna get high as I can”.) To conclude: I have spent a lot of time writing about electronic music with no words in, but maybe I’m more of a lyrics guy than I thought.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• “Like a Lover” by Loren Kramar (Spotify)

• “Quiero Ser Sexy” by SoFTT (Spotify)

• “Colores Del Mar” by Helado Negro (Spotify)

• “Gunsmoke and Mirrors” by Amira Unplugged, Lucky Dog (Spotify) 

• Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder are teaming up again (Hollywood Reporter)

• Your girlfriend wants you to read out loud to her (Guardian)

• WTF is Musi (Wired)

• Miranda July hive assemble (NYT)

• RIP Steve Albini 

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• A report on the future of mushrooms in wellness and commerce (Baukunst)

• “When I close my eyes, I dream of a world where I tried my best and everything worked out.” A new short story by Sasha Fletcher. (Baffler) 

• “Where are the ‘AI safety’ thought leaders in this utter vacuum of commentary on Israel’s commonly-remarked-upon ‘leading role’ in ML/AI research, and its connections to the Israeli military’s current war on Gaza in the last seven months?” (Reboot)

• You’re going to want to read every word of James Pogue’s dispatch from the Central African Republic (Granta)

• “Plenty of bankers have bought bottle service off Sartiano over the years, but now Goldman Sachs hitters can use their Zero Bond memberships to woo clients while pouring from sticker-shock bottles.” Nate Freeman sits down with the man behind Zero Bond (Vanity Fair) 

• Ethan Hawke interviews Ken Burns (Interview) 

• “I guess the kids told her she looks like someone’s mom and looks 30 years old.” Leave it to millennials to ruin posing as a teenager in order to go back to high school. (The Boston Globe)

• Rest of World reports on a stalled local project to benefit Argentines with their own lithium resources 

• Plants don’t feel pain but they do sense being touched, if you even care. (NPR)