Ask any idiot and they’ll tell you that music isn’t as good as it used to be. Of course, music is as brilliant, arousing, puzzling, woeful, tepid, boring and fantastic as it’s ever been. Every decade has been guilty of dreck and wonderment in equal measure.
To compare the Now to the Then is stupid, but that’s exactly what people are prone to do. They yearn for the world of music past, only remembering the Super 8 footage when everything looked wonderful and unchained. They stare at the present and tut at the commercial music they hear. Like their sad, incorrect parents, they mutter ‘they just don’t make ‘em like they used to’. And one recurring theme is that, lyrically, we’re a backward, regressing race.
This has generated untold thousands of Likes, and is meant to serve as an example of how great lyrics once were, compared to what music offers us now. Aside from the fact that Led Zep were responsible for some of the most hokey, irritatingly twee Hippie Poetry 101 lyrics ever committed to an ear, to compare the two is a complete nonsense. And besides, who says being ‘clever’ is a good idea? Rock ‘n’ roll’s very foundation is built on wilful nonsense and often, through musical gibberish, says far more than some berk twiddling their quill getting all dewy eyed in reverie.
Nonsense is king in the world of pop. It has always been there and should always remain. Of course, that’s not to say there aren’t great lyricists around today. Nick Cave, Super Furry Animals and Arctic Monkeys are responsible for some outrageously smart wordplay. That’s because music is as clever and dumb as it always has been. Pop needs both facets. Without incoherent garblings, we’d never have the thrill of ‘Surfin’ Bird’ or the immediacy of ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’s ‘La La La’ chorus.
So stop comparing nonsense to prose. It’s stupid, futile and plain wrong. Sometimes you want steak but there’s nothing wrong with burgers either.
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