One further thought on the issue of lyrics and why this debate is, as I said before, much to do about nothing. First, let’s establish some semantics guidelines; it would be helpful in avoiding confusion. By definition, a “song” is a musical composition intended to be sung; it has lyrics. A wordless composition is a ”tune”, “instrumental”, or “piece”; which doesn’t become a “song” until lyrics have been added.
Obviously, I have no way of knowing the actual percentage, but I would wager that at least half of all “songs” were composed by a song writing team. George and Ira Gershwin, Kander and Ebb, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Bernstein and Sondheim, Lennon and Macartney and Elton John and Bernie Taupin to name just a few of the most prominent ones. As described in the film “Rocketmam” that I saw recently (didn’t like), often one half of the team (John) has a stack of “tunes” that he has composed waiting for the other half of the team, the lyricist (Taupin), to write lyrics for the tune; or, the lyricist has a stack of lyrics waiting for a tune. Many of the great and popular songs played as Jazz instrumentals were written first as wordless tunes and lyrics were added after the fact; or the reverse is true. Any tune is a candidate for lyrics.
mary_jo, of course the question has “firm answer”. As you point out the performance is key. A great singer can make inferior lyrics sound fantastic. A poor singer can take poetic genius and make it sound terrible. Same for the musical performance part of it. As always, our personal bias has a tendency to creep into our reaction. Forgive me if I am mistaken and I don’t mean to take liberties, but I suspect that your feeling about lyrics being unnecessary, for Aranjuez in particular, became stronger as you became a stronger guitarist yourself.
Here’s an interesting twist to the question. Two vocal versions; one in Spanish the other in French. Same song, same singer, two different languages. She can sing and has recorded in several different languages. Which version of the song is more effective? Both beautiful, but for me the Spanish version wins hands down. Is that because of my personal bias (Spanish is my native tongue); or, is this a reflection of the well documented connection between the music and the language of a culture making the Spanish version more effective?
Spanish:
https://youtu.be/VQA-0q9f4qoFrench:
https://youtu.be/sERXZEM6sy8You may find this quote interesting:
“That melody is so strong that the softer you play it, the stronger it gets, and the stronger you play it, the weaker it gets." - Miles Davis
