It wasn’t your dislike about rap that made you narrow minded it was more like, how you didn’t like someting becaue it was wordy. I don’t really think that environment breeds interest. I enjoy rap, but I also enjoy Simon and Garfunkel. I think that if you never expand your horizons your perceptions will be continually limited what you want them to be, or whats familiar. I can’t think of anything more frieghtning! But really though, it does sound like most up tight jews I know.
I just think it’s awesome that my mom is all down for Andre’ 3000.
Yes, my explanations were faulty, because I was trying to turn a visceral reaction into an intellectual analysis, which didn’t work. It was a mistake. I still don’t think rap is music (I asked a friend of mine yesterday, and he agreed) but I’m not going to try to justify that opinion.
I think that if you never expand your horizons your perceptions will be continually limited what you want them to be, or whats familiar.
Sorry? How does defining what kind of music I like mean my “perceptions will be limited”? How many people out there listen to literally every single type of music? Or watch every single movie or play every type of video game? We all “limit our perceptions” in some way.
Most people limit their perceptions, but you absolutely stifle them, is what I think he was trying to say.
And I’m pretty sure you’re lying to yourself about not thinking rap is music. You do think it’s music, you’re just looking for a convenient way to not have to deal with it. I refuse to believe you’re actually stupid enough to not think so.
As for bands I consider lyrically great:
Ben Lee*
Brand New (Post-“Deja”)
City And Color*
Copeland
Death Cab*
<a href=“http://www.myspace.com/gregoryandthehawk”>Gregory and the Hawk</a>* (The greatness here is in the simplicity)
Matthew Good
Neverending White Lights*
<a href=“http://www.myspace.com/mybandowen”>Owen</a>*
Pete Yorn*
Radiohead
The Fall of Troy
Tool (with exceptions)
I don’t really listen to very many bands who can’t write, but those are some of the ones I’d put near the top based on things like:
- Vocabulary
- Timing
- Musical context
- Flow
- Simplicity and ease of understanding
- The overall ability to express legitimate thoughts and feelings
I starred the bands I think you’d enjoy.
The only of those I’d call “great” is GatH, and I guess “Death Cab” is good, but I wouldn’t say great. Then again, I think we’re looking for different things, and have some different standards on the things both of us are looking for.
I’m willing to bet you haven’t heard 5 or 6 of the bands I put down either.
Also, you don’t need to “think” anything because I explained exactly how I broke my ratings down. I looked at more than just syllables, rhymes, and obscurities. I looked at how the lyrics contribute to the final product, which is way more important, and every single band I listed is ACE at that.
Also, if you like GatH, you’d be a fool not to check out Owen.
Death Cab for Cutie has at least one song on The Gap playlist. I don’t know what song. I didn’t like the song. But damned if it’s gonna drive me crazy until I find out which one. I think it was on The Photo Album.
And I’m pretty sure you’re lying to yourself about not thinking rap is music. You do think it’s music, you’re just looking for a convenient way to not have to deal with it. I refuse to believe you’re actually stupid enough to not think so.
No, I really don’t think it’s music. That doesn’t mean that I think that everyone thinks it’s not music, just that I don’t. When I use the term “music”, rap does not ever enter the definition.
Thanks very much for the suggestions.
I hadn’t heard of The Fall of Troy until you mentioned them, here, so I can’t say much about them either way. I like The Fall of Troy, I just wouldn’t say “great” lyrics. I probably don’t know Neverending White Lights enough to comment, but I do know them.
Well, some differences are obvious. You don’t seem to particularly look for allusion, apostrophe, wordplay, and that sort of thing. I don’t particularly care about the meaning being straightforward, and you do. This means Nick Cave is going to be one of my favourite lyricists, while I would be really surprised if you liked him, especially the more recent stuff.
However, that point I was trying to make is that we probably have pretty different ideas of what is “good” in the categories like Vocabulary and Flow that we agree on.
I love Owen. Norstrom’s lyrics are amazing. I don’t know why I didn’t register that the first time reading the post.
Norstrom must be an alias. Owen’s a solo project by Mike Kinsella.
Also just FYI I don’t think Fall of Troy are really all that good with words, they’re just amazing at making them flow and enhancing them with powerful music.
Either that or mis-information from the friend who gave me Owen and At Home with Owen. I know nothing about Owen other than the music, essentially. Is this the Mike Kinsella who was in Cap’n Jazz? I would never have guessed that.
Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, The One Up Downstairs, American Football, Owen.
His brothers Tim and Nate are huge too.
John Keats’ poetry is very well established in the literary canon, but I can’t read it without condescending giggles mixed with digusted gags.
Oh, so fashionable!
O fret not after knowledge- I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge- I have none,
And yet the Evening listens.
Well, it’s not a fashion thing based on movements, a self-conscious choice towards modernism, if that’s what you mean. Which would be a pretty understandable comment to make, since there was a time I would’ve definitely held that reasoning. I love most of his contemporaries. I just happen to think Keats, specifically, was a hack. I mean, he wrote some good poems, but I don’t think anything worthy of literary immortality, especially considering how bad his average was. Primarily, I think much of his work seems emotionally and verbally forced; there this sort of insincerity to most of his poetry that renders it, to me, ineffectual. It ends up less poetry than funny-worded sentences with goofy line breaks. Something magic and vital just seems to be missing.
Huh.