«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

But where are the young Rodney Crowells and Iris DeMents and Buddy Millers? They're all still marvelous songwriters but they're from another era. Who's going to carry on when they're gone? Taylor Swift? Olivia Rodriguez? Ed Sheeran? No thanks.

@ezwind: You’re looking in the wrong places. Right here on Audiogon posters such as @slaw are making recommendations of great youg(er) artists. Steve has excellent musical taste, and really keeps up with new ones.

I myself can heartily recommend Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings (both heard on Ringo Starr’s album out later this month), two young bluegrass artists. Then there are Jenny Lewis, Tift Merritt, Brennen Leigh, Courtney Barnett, and plenty of other new females. I seem to gravitate to the dames, but here’s a video of Chris Stapleton---a newish Country artist---performing a killer live version of the Rodney Crowell song "Ain’t Living Long Like This". Watch for the guitar solo by Buddy Miller, a solo that epitomizes cool! For contrast I’ll also post a video of Rodney performing the song live with Emmylou Harris (and a stupendous band), another great version.

https://youtu.be/pFTedYeP-vQ?si=M8TJtWiuGTvuyBMs

https://youtu.be/KnqBH7jLb0I?si=iDgVtgjD4UFb6RN7

And while Mary Gauthier and Gillian Welch are no spring chickens, they have a couple/few more good decades ahead of them. For more, head over to the No Depression website, the home of Americana music.

I just again listened to Rodney’s version, and was as always left in utter awe at the quality of the music being made. It just don’t get no better!

As for what the future holds, I figure I have about a decade left here on Earth, so it ain’t my problem.

I listen mostly to darkwave and associated genres. While I can parse the words and the sequence appears to be grammatical (more or less), I can hardly ever figure out what he/she/they mean. Dada? Onomatopoetics? I don't know. I still like the music and mostly treat the vocals as another instrument.

I also like music that have vocals in languages I don't understand (Turkish, Greek, Russian, Polish, ...). Frequently the songs sung in the artists native tongues sound more authentic than when they try English (e.g. Ductape). I am not bothered with not being able to understand the words, occasionally wonder whether I enjoy some rather controversial content; think Rammstein, which I understand as a German native speaker.

I may be a bit lyrically tone-deaf as a hard-core scientist. OTOH I like writing, have 5 books with my name on the spine, and countless scientific papers. So I also have to read a lot, However, "literature" leaves me cold, poetry makes me mad. It is language that I find interesting, and language is there to convey meaning. Otherwise, why bother?

I have asked some musicians to explain their lyrics, but that was not well received. How dare I pose such a question? With Punk at least you know exactly what you get.

They say: "A joke isn't very good if you have to explain it."

Same with music/genres?

Just asking.