Aural Analysis is a weekly blog dedicated to critiquing the lyrics of songs. It is founded on the proposition that pop stars and rock stars, as rich and glamorous and sexy and famous and influential and powerful and popular as they are, are nevertheless, on the whole, a fairly stupid bunch of people. Aural Analysis presumes that the media we receive is not necessarily a one-way transmission from the rich and glamorous and powerful down to us unworthy unfamous starvelings who are desperate for stimulation, but rather that we have the right and indeed the obligation to enter into conversation with the media we receive, and ought to challenge it when the arguments that these media give us and the behaviors these media model for us us are impractical, unethical, self-destructive, or out-and-out braindead.
In case it's not apparent, the original text of the song will be presented as-is. My responses will be in the brackets.
If you want an anti-favorite song to be featured on Aural Analysis, send an email to Aural.Analysis@gmail.com. Put “Song Suggestion” in the subject line, and in the body of the email include a link to the music video. I'd prefer to see the original official video, if there is one, rather than any fan-made stuff; I think that gives me a better sense of what the musician/s is/are going for than seeing a slideshow of anime schoolgirls vaguely mouthing the words of the song. Note that I'll readily watch any video on YouTube, but your video might not get considered if it seems like the link is going to take me to some Uzbek filesharing site laden with worms and spyware. Below that link, you should include a link to a page with lyrics for the song, preferably a page that allows me to copy and paste the text rather than one of those sites that gets all huffy and proprietary and doesn't allow for copy and pasting. Let me know, after that, if you want your name (or email address) to be featured on the site; I won't post it otherwise.
I won't guarantee that any one song will or won't get picked for the next week's Analyzing, but if you want to increase the likelihood that a song gets the Analysis treatment, you should try to submit songs with stupid-ass lyrics. And by stupid-ass lyrics, I mean lyrics that are self-contradictory, incoherent, illogical, psychological aberrant, or that exhibit tortured rhyme, hollow braggadocio, preposterous presumptions, obsequious references, or obviously unhealthy approaches to human sexuality. That kind of thing. You know: Top 40 stuff. Or whatever. The style of the music is open. It's been my experience that most of the dumbest songs I've heard have been rock, pop, and rap songs, but maybe that's just because that's most of the songs I've heard, period. If you can find an aria with lyrics that seem as though they were written by a mental patient while he was hopped up from snorting dishwashing detergent, I'd consider that, too.
If I sometimes seem to be overly literal or unfairly critical of lyrics that are impressionistic and not meant to be taken as a clear and coherent argument or narrative, suffice to say that there are a great many artists, from Cab Calloway right on up to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who employ non-literal lyrical stylings and non-lexical vocables to good effect. And this practice, like most, can be done poorly or well. The songs and singers liable to show up on this site are ones that do this poorly.
If I sometimes seem to be proving the adage that those who can do and those who can't write snarky comments on the Internet, I would insist that criticism can be a creative act in itself. I think of my critiques as having more value than the original songs. But then, of course, I would. Maybe you will, too. Or maybe you will start your own website dedicated to critiquing my critiques, you uncreative hack.
If I sometimes seem to be criticizing people who have made millions of dollars and who have sold millions of albums and who have millions of fans, I am, and you're a fucking fool if you think those things should ever elevate a person above criticism. Ad populam and ad crumenam fallacies, bitch; learn about them.
If I sometimes seem to be throwing stones, spitting fire and venom and acting like a man who just wants to watch the world burn, I will endeavor to offer up regular suggestions as to music that doesn't insult the intelligence of anybody who can tie his or her shoes by him- or herself. There's a lot of good music out there, there really is, even in this age of mass-produced corporate pablum passing for culture. And my resentment for the shitty music exists only in proportion to my love of the good music.
If I sometimes seem to focus on the words of the song rather than the structure of the music or the images in the video, it's because I am a writer, and words are kind of my thing. Moreover, I think in the language of these songs do you get the clearest arguments about what love is and ought to be, how a person ought to act, and so on. And those things are often very contrary to any real lived human experience, and it makes me mad that pop songs keep pushing such unrealistic and anti-humanistic shit on us. That's not to say that the basslines or melodies or beats of such songs don't present certain worldviews and perhaps ought to be criticized in their own rights, but it's much easier—for me, at least—to enter into dialogue with actual language. Suffice to say that most of the songs that will probably end up here are sappy, formulaic exercises in 4/4 time and 1/4/5 chord progressions in the keys of C or G, but I leave it to people with more musicality than I to piece out that particular suckiness.
If I sometimes seem to be acting like a bitter failed lyricist whose own songwriting career never got off the ground and now goes around sniping at those who have succeeded where he has failed, a never-was who hates the happiness of them who have had luck and the accolades of crowds, well, that's because that's exactly what I am.
If I sometimes seem to be absolutizing my necessarily subjective and individual taste in music, exhibiting a vicious confidence in my own ability to recognize the good from the bad when all I can really ever do is recognize what i like and what I don't, well, guess what? That's pretty much all art criticism ever. And it's pretty much all art ever. It's pretty much everything that human beings have ever done outside of pure math. If you can't handle that somebody with an educated opinion and a deep understanding of lyricism doesn't like the songs you like, then go back home to YouTube and complain about people giving thumbs-down to Justin Bieber videos.
If I sometimes seem to be rather crass in my responses, it is only because popular music is increasingly explicit in its assertions of over-the-top fantastic sexuality; such things engender a response in kind. Or else they engender a finger waving and a clucking tongue from your Nana, but my issue is less with the fact that people have sex than with the fact their songs are pretty much bragging about the fantastic sex they have, fantastic sex than normal people like you and me could never have, but in reality the sex seems to accompany a real failure to understand intimacy and relationships, so maybe it's all for the best, so yeah, in any case, it pisses me the fuck off.
I think that pretty much pre-empts most of the objections I can currently think of. If you're still around, click on one of the Analyses and let's do this.
