Do you go for lyrics or music?

It's the either or that slows the reply process. Cop out, it depends, this mornings listening has been Rammstein, Cantate Domino and Rhiannon Giddens.

For the first two I do not speak the language so it is the whole, which means the music. With the last the content, meaning and emotion are in the lyrics, but without the music some of the expression would be missing.

There is also context, if I am on holiday, seaside harbour, shantymen singing, I want to join in, so it is the lyrics.

Call it a draw?

If I had to choose between the two, then music. Much music doesn't even have lyrics, and lyrics can be the most meaningless in the world but if the music is good then it matters not a jot (however if the lyrics are offensive to me, or otherwise a real turn-off, that can obliterate the music). If the music is neither good nor bad, then if the lyrics are good enough I can enjoy the song. But if the music is bad the best lyrics in the world won't make me want to play it. 

But when the music has meaningful lyrics that strike a chord (sic!) with me, then it moves to another emotional level, which is good.

And when that is combined with the magic of live theatre - i.e. live opera - then the result can be the most powerful of transcendental experiences...

Without music lyrics are simply poetry. McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" might be the finest example (in popular music) of visual poetry set to appropriate accompanying music. The music is equally as evocative in despair as are the lyrics, yet somehow an immensely popular song. Tough to separate the words from the lyrics in that case.

It depends,  I am just as affected/contented with just music,  some works affect me as only music can,  whereas some lyrics have an affect but its affecting another sense.  And in that respect (for me) it matters not if its classical, opera, jazz or pop.

As it happens we were listening to some Mark Knopfler last evening,  it started with the very moving Going Home theme from Local Hero.  That got us discussing MK & my admiration of some of his lyrics that are real poetry.  a good example is "So Far From the Clyde",  a song about an old ship going to the ship breaking yards of the indian subcontinent,  beaching the old ship & breaking her up on the sea shore, ugly, tragic, but pure poetry.  

It's always the music that attracts me to a song.

Primarily music.  I don't much enjoy poetry, for instance.  When I was young, I much preferred instrumental music to anything with singing in it.  As I grew older I grew to like (some) music with voices.  Some things, though, the words are very important to me (Bert Jansch earlier stuff, Pentangle, John Renbourn, Mamas and Papa's California dreaming, Donovan's Sunshine Superman album (though not the title track) and lots of others, and sometimes the words are totally unimportant (McFerrin's Circle Songs, e.g. Circle Song 6 in particular,  which have no words but is entirely voices).  But if I had to choose between only hearing music without songs, or only music with songs, it would be the former.

To be honest I have never thought about the differences.  Much music can be lyrical. The same with lyrics being very musical.

I mainly go for the music. I very often can’t make up even what the lyrics are expressing or even you sometimes can’t hear them. I am a lover of full instrumental music or very well executed lyrical music. 

Only in exceptional cases I get into the lyrics and get touched by it, sometimes with concept albums..... this is a good example for me from the German progressive band Sylvan with the song This World is Not For Me.......

Living with promises - broken and light
Flowing through confidence - I know - and dampening ties

And this world is not for me, so I have to leave
And this world is not for me - now that I see...

Weakening constantly body and soul
Killing all sympathies - that's me - just when they grow
Pull up myself - desperately - at least I have tried
One day I'll know - eventually - for what I have cried

Hazy shades of happiness are rushing through my head
Vanishing reluctantly and leaving me so sad
Mesmerizing melodies within a bygone dream
Wish I could keep hold of it but I know it's not for me...

Fuzzy and doubtfully, humbled and criticized
Drowning predictably, everything memorized
Bluish rose-colored glass - black with a touch of white
Still hold myself apart - self-pity mixed with pride again...

Million stars above I see - all for you - what's left for me?

Music all the way, lyrics just the icing on the cake. 

If it were the opposite, I would be missing so much of world music since I speak only three languages.

Why have a preference?  Surely it’s what moves you to enjoy listening to a piece and that can be either or both (or neither?).  The voice can be an instrument in itself of course, as Lisa Gerrard, who sings but doesn’t use language, or perhaps listening to a song in a language you don’t speak.

By the way song lyrics are generally not poems, mostly they are songs which is a different craft.  Some song lyrics may work as poems but I would believe that is a happy coincidence, and sometimes a poem may be set to music, but that is not the same as song writing...

For me it has always been the music. I rarely focus on lyrics. In my youth I adored (and still do) 'Close to the Edge' by Yes and those lyrics are completely bonkers, but it's a marvellously enjoyable work of creative musical art.

A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace
And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace
And achieve it all with music that came quickly from afar
Then taste the fruit of man recorded losing all against the hour
And assessing points to nowhere, leading every single one
A dewdrop can exalt us like the music of the sun
And take away the plain in which we move
And choose the course you're running.

As I say, bonkers!

Consciousmess posted:

Make this an either/or. Personally I go for lyrics, which is probably why I like many Dylan songs.

(Putting aside spine tingling moments of harmony some pieces bring! I still vote lyrics.)

You always ask the questions, so interested to hear your own opinion on the question...

Bert Schurink posted:

Consciousmess posted:

Make this an either/or. Personally I go for lyrics, which is probably why I like many Dylan songs.

(Putting aside spine tingling moments of harmony some pieces bring! I still vote lyrics.)

You always ask the questions, so interested to hear your own opinion on the question...

I think he did --he prefers lyrics.

Some Tribal music uses poetry as a drum !

ayap1 posted:

Bert Schurink posted:

Consciousmess posted:

Make this an either/or. Personally I go for lyrics, which is probably why I like many Dylan songs.

(Putting aside spine tingling moments of harmony some pieces bring! I still vote lyrics.)

You always ask the questions, so interested to hear your own opinion on the question...

I think he did --he prefers lyrics.

Maybe that explains the questions he asks!

Music hands down. I'm definitely an "I listen to the beats" kind of guy.

Mostly the music. But in some cases the lyrics are just as or even more important. Not least many of the songs by Leonard Cohen come to mind here. 

Claus

I do love good lyrics but megadeth singing beautiful lyrics wouldn't really make me like their music but good music with bad lyrics is still good music. 

Do I go for eggs or oil in Mayonnaise?

M.

But just to try an answer, the music culture went for Music First from about one thousand years ago to around 1580.  Then it was Lyrics First for about a century, then came Bach and it was neither, in a way, for a while. Then it was Music First again (in spite of Schubert to Mahler) until Joni Mitchell, who is a sort of Inverse Bach because it's Neither First again but I love her instead.

As for me, I am surprised to discover that a song has much less meaning to me if I don't know the words (and even less sometimes when I know them). But in general, ignoring for a moment that Mendelssohn wrote Songs Without Words, a good song is mainly lyrics. I think it's more the need to say than to sing that moves you to write a song (or so it was for me when I wrote songs). So, in spite of everything, I am for lyrics. When I think of River, and I hear I wish I had a river I could skate away on, I can't imagine any music that could spoil or better that astonishing image, but any other words would make that a simple tune.

It’s abit like,  do you like tea or water, for good tea you have to have both, but you can live with just water. But a teabag on its own is of no value? Plus the water is of no value unless it’s hot if you want good tea. 

So in answer to your question,  I like tea, I like water, teabag without hot water I don’t like much, teabag with no water I don’t like much? 

So I hope I have made my answer as clear as possible and this answers the question in question.... music no lyrics can be good but sometimes not, music with lyrics can be good but sometimes not....

Great lyrics are a form of poetry, either telling a story or creating a mood.  Lots of Dylans songs and Cohen's plus others open up meanings and put odd images together.  Seems to let my mind wander and dream.  I listen to Radio Paradise a lot now but notice that the current singers  don't enunciate and fade into a stream of music making it background for me. Just creating a mood.

It is really wonderful when both are soaring together in perfect emotion and harmony.

I tend not to think about the words too much. Unless I get really into the tune, at which point I need to know what they are talking about. So I quite like Norwegian folk songs though I don't know any Norwegian.

Also I find that I have many "mondagreen" moments where I find that the words I always thought were being sung were something else. For example, the famous Neil Diamond song "Reverend Blue Jeans".

There is s book out on misinterpreted lyrics, it is pretty funny, saw a bit of it at a friend's place.

For me, it is predominantly music although I don't discount the importance of lyrics.  It really depends on the genre and style of the music really.  While a Bach Cantata | Passion or Schubert Lieder or Opera tends to support the notion of lyrics as the central force to behold, I still rely mostly on the music.  Great composers tell us directly with the music what the lyrics are saying.  In fact, I would argue that the music is a better description than the words as the words have limits to meaning.  Music is a language that far surpasses words with imagery and emotion. 

Of course, I don't feel this same way about popular music today where the music generally is not sufficient to describe the composer wanted to say through words.