«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

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.

Frogman as professional informed  musician said it better and it is what i understood too from Beato video and the reason why i posted it as a step for a reflexion.

it is not about "taste" or nostalgia it is about the musical sophistication levels and the popularity chart levels...

There is as much good musicians than in the past today by the way...

I think some of you miss the point of what Beato is saying; which I mostly agree with. He is not saying that there are no good lyrics being written today. He acknowledges that there are. He is saying that today there are few songs with good lyrics relative to their popularity (number of listens). Top ten songs today have, by and large, pretty awful lyrics compared to top ten songs of, for instance, the Beatles era.

I don’t share the cynical view that he is expressing these opinions for effect and his own popularity.

Gotta say I Never got much out of Steely Dan lyrics. 

That may be, and I don’t disagree,  But the issue here is not Steely Dan’s lyrics per se.  Nonetheless, an argument could be made that their lyrics are a perfect fit for their at often vapid, urban-hip overall musical aesthetic delivered with ultra-precise technical execution.  Still, with a couple of notable exceptions from their past catalogue, hardly top-forty.material.

As concerns the claimed “nuances” in today’s popular music and its lyrics which are on a similar level of artistry and that might appeal to an equivalent percentage of the music listening public as did the songs of Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Elton John/BT, Marvin Gaye, Simon and Garfunkel, Jimmy Webb, yes The Beatles (just a few that come to mind), please educate me and post some examples.  Honest request.  ​​​​​​

As a young adult, I was wandering around aimlessly.  Then, the message from The Beatles -- Come Together added clearity and purpose to my life. I've enjoyed a long and prosperous carerer in underground ballon navigation, and never looked back.