«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

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.

That’s actually pretty funny.  Well done. 😊

As a kid, when we were driving around my father would make the same argument about how stupid is the music playing on the radio.  When he started up on that, I would start to sing "Three little fishies in an itty bitty pool.  Three little fishies and a momma fishy too.. ."  There are silly/dumb songs from any given time and cherry picking good and bad songs for comparison proves nothing.

@frogman

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).

OK. My bad, then. I guess, if I think about it, what I’m actually frustrated with is his stubbornly unvarying focus upon popular music -- not Popular, as opposed to Classical or Jazz - but what happens to be most liked by a majority of listeners. Is he unaware that some very fine artists do not have mass appeal? Is it that a majority of his followers are only aware of what’s in the top ten in any given year and don’t care about anything else? I’m struggling here.

If he’s going to feature Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald why not also talk about Richard Thompson and John Martyn? I don’t get it. I’m not saying Richard Thompson and John Martyn are better than Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald. I’m just saying I wish Beato would opt to also discuss artists who are less well known.