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Lyrics

Zakalwe

Inactive Member
I find that the most important part of any song is the Lyrics. Importantly my favourite musician is Leonard Cohen, the premier Lyricist in the world (ignore what Sekiko says, she is heathen).

And thus I created this thread, mainly to get opinion on the lyrics of that great man I'm going to post, but feel free to post any others, by any singer or group, here for comments.

This particular song is one I only found recently:

"Death Of A Ladies' Man"

Ah the man she wanted all her life was hanging by a thread
"I never even knew how much I wanted you," she said.
His muscles they were numbered and his style was obsolete.
"O baby, I have come too late." She knelt beside his feet.
"I'll never see a face like yours in years of men to come
I'll never see such arms again in wrestling or in love."
And all his virtues burning in the smoky Holocaust
She took unto herself most everything her lover lost
Now the master of this landscape he was standing at the view
with a sparrow of St. Francis that he was preaching to
She beckoned to the sentry of his high religious mood
She said, "I'll make a place between my legs,
I'll show you solitude."

He offered her an orgy in a many mirrored room
He promised her protection for the issue of her womb
She moved her body hard against a sharpened metal spoon
She stopped the bloody rituals of passage to the moon

She took his much admired oriental frame of mind
and the heart-of-darkness alibi his money hides behind
She took his blonde madonna and his monastery wine --
"This mental space is occupied and everything is mine."

He tried to make a final stand beside the railway track
She said, "The art of longing's over and it's never coming back."
She took his tavern parliament, his cap, his cocky dance,
she mocked his female fashions and his working-class moustache.

The last time that I saw him he was trying hard to get
a woman's education but he's not a woman yet
And the last time that I saw her she was living with some boy
who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy.

So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed
It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

***

Enjoy.
 
Hmmm

Lyrics can be an important part of a song, but there are other angles to it as well.

1) Some artists will just use words to bring the point across, and not use any emotion in their voice.

2) From a musical perspetive the most important part is the beat, e.g a drummer

3) I prefer the musical instruments such as a guitar, violin as I believe that they bring across emotions subtly without making it obvious with lyrics, I also like the fact that instruments other than voice can be almost like another language, that flows and provides an escape from the spoken language we hear every day.
 
Zakalwe said:
I find that the most important part of any song is the Lyrics. Importantly my favourite musician is Leonard Cohen, the premier Lyricist in the world (ignore what Sekiko says, she is heathen).
Click to expand...

I disagree, the lyrics are not the most important part fo the song, ifeel as Laz said, the emotion and the voice are important. Although each has a different intepretion of te lyric. Also in music, such as death metal the lyrics are often can't be understood and this doesn't make them worse, just different and many people still like them, me being one of them.
 
Zakalwe said:
I find that the most important part of any song is the Lyrics.
Click to expand...
Counterpoint:

"Hamster of grunge, be an adult.
Lobster of revenge, accompany him.
Sniper."

Good song anyway.
 
I don't care about lyrics. I even find that they spoil the music, sometimes.

What attracts me in a song is the performance of the artists, how everything blends smoothly, how it can warm your heart/pump adrenalin in your veins/make you sad/make you laugh (pick one or more), ... I don't listen to what the song says, I listen to how it says it.

Now about thoses lyrics, they look good, but they also look like hundreds of other love-related songs. Also, they made me laugh, which isn't what the author intended, I guess. (but that's because i'm a cynical, egotistical, sarcastic [insert random insult here] that laughs from the misery of others )
 

Yay! Soulmates, lol!
 
sada sakue said:
I confess that I may not be skilled enough in english to grasp what the song is about.
Click to expand...
I don't think I am, either...

So what's it about, guy killed himself and left everything to her? She killed him and took everything? Divorced? What?
 
Simply put -- no matter how lyrically cool he is, I've yet to hear a song of his that has the instruments match the quality of the lyrics. His poetry should be held in high regard, yes. However, I enjoy music, not poetry.

This is why Clapton is God and Cohen is not. This is why Pete Townshend is my hero and not Mr. Cohen.

Mark Knopfler shall always rule the day. Mr. Cohen simply rules the ethereal world, which doesn't get my blood moving at all.

(Thomas and I have yakked about this before.)
 
What it is about it very open to individual interpretation, however I'll try and explain what I think it's about.

Apart from the first two verse ... they're deep and all, but they're also weird. Anyone who can interpret them for me gets 20 points.

However the whole verse is actually about the death of the 60's and 70's, the death of that whole style of clothing, of dancing, the looks, the mentality.

In this song there is a man whole epitomises all of that, the "master of this landscape", but he is doomed, crashing down, surpassed, outdated, "His muscles they where numbered and his style was obsolete."

That's the first verse, although it's deeper than that.

The second verse ... I don't understand. It's just ... strange, and possibly something to do with pregnancy.


This is the central part of the song. She has scorned him for everything that he embraced, the 'religion' that is mentioned earlier in the song. He has fallen behind the times, and what he epitomised is now something to be held in contempt, even mocked as the woman did.

In the second verse it is apparent that he is trying to learn about how a woman feels and thinks, trying to make up for the fact that he was a 'ladies' man'. She on the other hand has found someone with whom she is devoid of any love, but who gives her good sex.

And the last verse is an intresting one, but it suggests taht during the 60's and 70's there was a great union between to entities an 'affair' which has now fallen apart and has left everyone "vacant and deeply unimpressed".

And the last lines:

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

Well they're just fascinating. They're nihilistic, but speak of doing something for its own sake.

I haven't yet analysed this song, so that's all I can give you right now. If I worked a little harder I could get more information out of it I suppose.

*******

You mean the lyrical sophistication of:

"Talking about my generation
Why don't they f-f-f-f-fade away"?

Doshii, I'll send you this one, it's got more complicated music. It was produced by Phil Spensor if that means anything to you.
 
Zakalwe said:
You mean the lyrical sophistication of:

"Talking about my generation
Why don't they f-f-f-f-fade away"?

Doshii, I'll send you this one, it's got more complicated music. It was produced by Phil Spensor if that means anything to you.
Click to expand...

Hey, that was the early years.

One word: Quadrophenia. That's love, baby.
 
sada sakue said:
I confess that I may not be skilled enough in english to grasp what the song is about.
Click to expand...

I can ask what you think about lyrics of the song "Coiffeur d'oiseaux"? Perhaps that would be a more applicable for lyric discussion, for anyone that knows and can understand the song anyway (literally understand, you don't need to have a good interpretation ^_^ ). Or maybe another song such as "Retour a vega". <------ Really good song.
 
How about this.
The ability to write lyrics doesnt make a musician. It makes a writer.
Thank you.

Now onward. My current favorite song (lyrically) is as follows.

Cygnet Committee - David Bowie
 
Seems to me to be the grievings of a spurned God.

That or theoreticly someone whose elected a dictatorship.
 
A little of both, the way I see it.

I see the ending as what Nairan would become if they won. Oppressed to oppressor.

Read: And I close my eyes and tighten up my brain
For I once read a book in which the lovers were slain
For they knew not the words of the Free States' refrain

Soviet much?
 
A good friend of mine said that if there was a song to commit suicide to, it was this. I on the other hand feel happy everytime I hear it. Figures. But enjoy the wonderful tone, the feel that the subject has wasted his life and left nothing but an empty bleak future with the promise of things getting only worse!


Dress Rehearsal Rag

Four o'clock in the afternoon
and I didn't feel like very much.
I said to myself, "Where are you golden boy,
where is your famous golden touch?"
I thought you knew where
all of the elephants lie down,
I thought you were the crown prince
of all the wheels in Ivory Town.
Just take a look at your body now,
there's nothing much to save
and a bitter voice in the mirror cries,
"Hey, Prince, you need a shave."
Now if you can manage to get
your trembling fingers to behave,
why don't you try unwrapping
a stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?

There's no hot water
and the cold is running thin.
Well, what do you expect from
the kind of places you've been living in?
Don't drink from that cup,
it's all caked and cracked along the rim.
That's not the electric light, my friend,
that is your vision growing dim.
Cover up your face with soap, there,
now you're Santa Claus.
And you've got a gift for anyone
who will give you his applause.
I thought you were a racing man,
ah, but you couldn't take the pace.
That's a funeral in the mirror
and it's stopping at your face.
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
ah wasn't it a strange way down?

Once there was a path
and a girl with chestnut hair,
and you passed the summers
picking all of the berries that grew there;
there were times she was a woman,
oh, there were times she was just a child,
and you held her in the shadows
where the raspberries grow wild.
And you climbed the twilight mountains
and you sang about the view,
and everywhere that you wandered
love seemed to go along with you.
That's a hard one to remember,
yes it makes you clench your fist.
And then the veins stand out like highways,
all along your wrist.
And yes it's come to this,
it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?

You can still find a job,
go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
there are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
they can give you back your hope,
you can find your love with diagrams
on a plain brown envelope.
But you've used up all your coupons
except the one that seems
to be written on your wrist
along with several thousand dreams.
Now Santa Claus comes forward,
that's a razor in his mit;
and he puts on his dark glasses
and he shows you where to hit;
and then the cameras pan,
the stand in stunt man,
dress rehearsal rag,
it's just the dress rehearsal rag,
you know this dress rehearsal rag,
it's just a dress rehearsal rag.
 
Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2


And of course Bonos midsong rant in 1987 on the Rattle and Hum tour...

 
A great song about the Troubles in Ireland if I've ever heard one, and a very nice comment on the bottom. Now this is something I think all our American members should find fun:


I love it!
 
One of Cohens better works there.

Democracy - The Damned
 
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