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May 22, 2005
leeriks lownj
Been thinking today about good lyricists (Karate guy got me doing it) and, how freakin’ good the good ones are—to rival the well established, published, and respected lit-geek writers—who my favorites are, and how that short list is pretty much the same as my short list for artists/musicians in general, which may immediately strike you as an obvious, requisite, given but it’s not: Kiss fans can’t claim that kind of alignment, nor do they care, and it doesn’t mean they have poor taste or that Kiss doesn’t excell in other areas (sex, merchandising, image, and putting on the party fever to name four right off the top of my head). And it’s all the more amazing when you love the music and the lyrics as well, and realize that those are two separate talents and it’s incredible andmaybe not fair at all that they get so much of both all in one person at the same time. Could even break the music talent into two parts: the ear, the gift of writing a good song with hooks and catchy hit-making melodies, or moving melodies, or both, and then the technical skill, the mechanical ability to pick the guitar fast and accurate like that as the fingers on your other hand bend and contort over steel digging strings in unnatural and impressive ways, and then recording equipment, and so on. Sometimes the level of talent just blows me away.
Let’s list the lyricists we like not least:
- Jeff Mangum
- PJ Harvey
- Leonard Cohen
- Modest Mouse feller, whatever his name is
And now this Karate dude seems eligible, gonna go read some stuff right now and report back………Well, my verdict isn’t much of one: sometimes that cat hits high ghihs, lovely good stuff, but sufficiently other times, he sounds like one of those psuedo-intellectual trying too hard to not try poets that get all abstracky and dense and meaninglessy (and, yes, I’m talking about myself as much as anyone—I have been known). Yeah, anyway, he just doesn’t always pull it off, but sometimes he does.
And more as an honorable mention—because don’t know other stuff and this one is plain but wise, so not super artsy creative—is the John Legend. Like that Ordinary People business.
Posted by peligrito at May 22, 2005 1:11 AM
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