on lyrics and totr

March 5th, 2009 • movies+music

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I have a long running argument with several people that love music but ignore song lyrics. Their thinking tends to be that they listen to music for the music, any poetry is incidental. I reply that by paying no attention to lyrics they are missing out on a huge facet of the experience, like watching a ballet without any music. True, not every great song has great lyrics. But finding out that a song you already love has an interesting story woven throughout adds a new layer of excitement to it. It allows a fresh discovery. I imagine this is one reason I am able to listen to some bands without tiring of them for months?because after getting to like the melody there is another whole layer to discover.

All this I?m talking about I experienced again today with TV on the Radio. I?ve been absorbing their sound for more than two years now and I never gave much thought to the lyrics. Electronic bands tend to be weak on songwriting anyway. But I happened upon a fantastic live acoustic version (which you can enjoy here) wherein the lyrics are more clear and I was able to appreciate them for the first time.

First I listened to ?Young Liars.? The wordplay is intriguing and makes me want to listen to the song over and over to grasp how the interplay of these lyrics ties to the larger work. It starts off: ?My mast ain?t so sturdy, my head is at half. I?m searching the clouds for the storm,? putting a dark sailing image in my head. This is followed by a huntress, her ?bullets bearing the name of each tigress who?s left to a tooth. Save the skins for a pelt and the rest for a belt.? Later he says, ?my heart?s still a marble in an empty jelly jar.? That?s a fantastic metaphor?it captures how he is feeling physically, intellectually and emotionally. He goes on to say that his nervousness will become prescience and ?I?m Making maps out of your dreams.? The song ends with ?Young liars, (Oh I said) Thank you for taking my hands/And burying them deep in the world?s wet womb/Where no one can heed their commands.? TV on the Radio has a sound that is dark and ominous, the music has already given us that abstraction. But more specifically the lyrics suggest the writer?s fear of the future and what he is capable of. And he does this using images (the ship in the storm, the ruthless huntress, the heart-jelly jar metaphor) that create a picture in the listener?s mind. The lyrics, though still vague, take the song from a pleasant abstraction and transform it into a dark journey. It adds such a visual layer to the song that a music video is the only way to supplement it (and videos never seem to be the artist?s vision, but the director?s, so it wouldn?t be the same at all). Reading the lyrics, how do you not visualize them? I picture the huntress on a B-52 bomber, loading a revolver, her legs crossed, a stack of rifles at her side, dressed in the 1940?s splendor of the Safari. And all this, visually, is just a metaphor for how he is feeling. You may visualize it differently, but undoubtably the image as you experience it brings something new to the song.

via: (the Future is Fiction – Make This Moment Your Poetry ? Song Lyrics and TV on the Radio)

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