Mope Pop is Funny

Just yesterday someone actually informed me that I don't like 'songs' but instead I only like 'music', and that the fact that I usually don't notice song lyrics unless I specifically listen for them is 'retarded'. It was such a bizarre statement that I've been trying to figure out what the hell she even meant.

It came from my complaint that Trent Reznor is singing too loudly in his latest album.

But the accusation got me to thinking about how my love of music differs from some other people's. I'm usually not ever one to want to learn very much about a rock star's personality or his or her life outside of the recording studio and stage. There are quite a few bands in my current rotation who's members' names I don't even know, but who's music I absolutely adore. To my thinking the fact that I can know a song backwards and forwards and can hum the whole thing and play it out if I wanted to is everything I could ever want from a song and a band.

But then I go online, usually just out of cursory searches for new music, and people on fan message boards are combing over details of a singer's personal life. Not something I can usually ever even get to the end of reading.

And then there are the stories people have of how a song changed their lives, or how songs make them feel a certain way, or how some line from a song is something they want to be included in a wedding vow. There simply aren't these kinds of ties between music and memory for me. When I'm feeling down I don't go and look for a song that tries to reflect exactly how I'm feeling. Most times I just want to have something coming into my ears so I can think about that instead of whatever is weighing me down at the time.

Growing up if you asked me what I thought a song like "In Bloom" by Nirvana meant I'd probably have to say "Let me listen to it again so I can pay attention to the words". Then I might be able to pick apart the words and come up with some kind of analysis, but that would pass out of my consciousness long before I heard the song again and be more concerned with humming the wicked guitar riff and playing air drums to Dave Grohl's percussive savagery.

So tonight I tried to search my mind for examples of song lyrics that actually do hit me in a personal way. At first I had to think 'OK, what singer actually thinks about things the way you do?' The quick and easy answer to that was, of course, Morrissey.

So in goes You Are the Quarry. As I listen to it I remember the same complaint as I had about With Teeth, the singer expects that I want to hear his words repeated every time I put the song on. The Smiths had lots of clever lyrics as well, to be sure, but fortunately Johnny Marr's ego prevented Morrissey from dominating the sound quite as much.

Maybe it's why I have a hard time listening to this album.. Because Moz is singing things that do get to me, and I can't quite tune them out. Like the line: “Close your eyes / And think of someone you physically admire / And let me kiss you. / But then you open your eyes / And you see someone that you physically despise. / But my heart is open to you.”

Even though he's gotten extremely rich off of this kind of self-hatred, which means I'll have to find some other way of making my fortune, there is some kind of reassurance hearing the same thing come from some other mind.

There are a couple of very notable other exceptions. “It's Not Easy Being Green” will bring tears to my eyes if I sing along to it, and I've only actually listened to Billie Holiday sing “Strange Fruit” once, and not wanting to hear it again.
Technorati Tags: Music, Morrissey