«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

Omg, @mapman ...I for one was thrilled when 'popular music' began to grow up 'n away from 'bubblegum songs' of the early '60's.....spent too much menial mental energy perversing the lyrics into X or demonic versions....I've fortunately forgotten more than recalled, to y'alls' benefit and relief.....

@mahgister  *wry Laugh* "...I coulda' been ah contender..."  Even D. Byrne in his book notes he'd do the music and fill in the lyrics to suit the stanzas....which does 'splain the topics and phraseologies'....

When asked about his collaboration with Twyla Tharp, he had no comment....one was left with either he was chided into it or was somewhat embarrassed over it.

I don't know or know of any 'perfect personage'...now or ever....really.

Given the antics of those of Now and Before, fame and fate seems to follow PR and  word of mouth of the beguiled of their respective eras....and I'll stop this line of reasoning before I begin to tick some off in a major way.

Happy PreNew Year....more than happy to close it out, but not looking forward towards the next 4.

Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est

Beato expecting to find "good" lyrics (or music for that matter) in the stuff most popular these days is akin to him expecting to find good food at a fast food restaurant. Kids listen to whatever music they are fed, and eat fast food regularly. Doesn’t mean we have to, and to worry about it like he does seems like a waste of my precious remaining time on Earth. If he thinks the video will make him some money, good for him.

Beato has a deep technical understanding of music, but I find that musical education has greatly affected his tastes in same. He knows a lot more music theory than do many songwriters I could name, but he hasn’t written any songs as good as those writers have. I’m sure he likes Steely Dan far more than Hank Williams and Merle Haggard, and has never heard anything by Iris DeMent. Merle liked Iris’ song "No Time To Cry" so much he recorded it himself. I’ll bet Dylan finds more wisdom in Hank’s "I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive" than he does in any Steely Dan song, but I’m not going to fault Beato for not doing the same.

As others have already here said, there are plenty of songwriters, singers, and musicians currently making music as good as is true of every past decade. Lucky me (and others here), my taste runs to music now known as Americana, and there is so much coming out in that genre (Americana is more accurately viewed as an umbrella term for music made by those in the Singer-Songwriter, Folk, Country, Alt-Country, Hillbilly, Bluegrass, Rockabilly, etc. genres) that I have trouble keeping up with it all.

**** expecting to find "good" lyrics (or music for that matter) in the stuff most popular these days is akin to him expecting to find good food at a fast food restaurant ****

That was Beato’s point.  ….as concerns the stuff most popular these days.  Re a different comment:  lyrics don’t have to be “incredibly deep lyrics” to be good lyrics.  

An "entertainer" recently suggested that the goal of entertainment is to "create a common culture." Whille this may not be true in an ideological sense, it is certainly true from a return on investment sense. 500,000,000 plays? It doesn’t require anything above 4th grade math to determine that there’s a fairly substantial paycheck there for somebody(s).

Today’s new well-written music/lyrics hasn’t experienced the profound transition from, say, Bing Crosby -- > Led Zeppelin. It has nuance which has not (yet) wrapped it’s arms around massive quantities of music lovers. You have to find it vs it finding you.