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August 09, 2006
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing
I like pop music -- and by that I mean the generic rock & roll -- as much as the next guy, but it doesn't compare to the standards of the early-to-mid 20th Century.
The well-constructed lyrics, meshing with the tune to tell a story, the melody and the words lingering in my mind, symbolize all that's right with music.
Rock, with its pounding beat and often indecipherable words lost in a morass of feedback, well, it's good for driving across long stretches of the interstate, but it feels like a guilty pleasure.
I was reading an interview with the polymath Mark Steyn, and apart from his trenchant political analysis, he's also a music historian and critic, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the best of American song-writing for stage, screen and Sinatra.
In the midst of a discussion about the strengths of various songwriters, Steyn offered his theory as to why rock is often so ... unimpressive.
Mark Steyn: No, I think it's basically that after The Beatles came along, every record company was looking for groups that wrote their own songs. Something tells you that if you take a record in 1938, the singer, the conductor, the arranger, the composer, the lyricist, all were doing their speciality, what they were good at. You take a record that's made in 1998 and the same guy is basically singing, writing, arranging. Is it likely that he's as good at all those things? It's like if you were having some work done on your house and the guy who is re-shingling your roof or plastering your basement says, 'Don't worry, I can also handle the plumbing,' that's generally not a good way to go. There's a lot to be said for specialisation.
A brilliantly simple analogy that sums up the problem. Think about it. Sinatra never wrote a single tune, but he owned those songs, working with lyricists like Dorothy Fields and arrangers like Nelson Riddle to make music, dammit, the kind I can listen to for the rest of my life, music that seems to reach down into the soul, the right phrase, the perfect phrasing raising goose-bumps and making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Never heard a rock & roll song that could do that.
Posted by Mike Lief at August 9, 2006 12:03 AM
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Wellll ... yes and no. Most pop and country stars don't write their own songs, and some of the songs are memorable and some are forgettable, *just* like the ones who *do* write their own. Songwriters go up and down like everybody else.
The great Disney songwriters, the Sherman brothers, won an Oscar for Mary Poppins but wrote some ho-hum stuff for a few other flicks.
Personally I've never seen what's so great about the Beatles except that they were the first in an arguably negligible genre. They did a *lot* of fluffpop.
It's all on a case-by-case basis with me. Some groups/individuals write/sing good stuff; some take others' songs and make them their own; some do both.
Posted by: Anwyn at August 16, 2006 09:53 PM
Ah, the Sherman brothers.
More than Mary Poppins, I like their work on The Jungle Book. Phil Harris kills on this song.
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That brings the bare necessities of life
Wherever I wander, wherever I roam
I couldn't be fonder of my big home
The bees are buzzin' in the tree
To make some honey just for me
When you look under the rocks and plants
And take a glance at the fancy ants
Then maybe try a few
The bare necessities of life will come to you
They'll come to you!
[...]
Now when you pick a pawpaw
Or a prickly pear
And you prick a raw paw
Next time beware
Don't pick the prickly pear by the paw
When you pick a pear
Try to use the claw
But you don't need to use the claw
When you pick a pear of the big pawpaw
Have I given you a clue ?
The bare necessities of life will come to you
They'll come to you!
That makes me smile, just reading it.
I think Steyn's larger point become more readily apparent when you read more of his essays on the great songwriters, archived at his site.
Posted by: Mike Lief at August 16, 2006 10:38 PM
Will gladly read tomorrow when I have more available brainpower, but you're darn right on the Jungle Book tracks -- and Phil Harris. He was fabulous. :)
Posted by: Anwyn at August 16, 2006 11:42 PM