«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

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

Same with music/genres?

Just asking.

@bdp24 - I think we’re talking about two very different things. I’m aware of just about all the artists you mentioned and I do stay fairly up to date on the new young artists entering the scene. Like you, my tastes lean toward the catch-all Americana genres and there are certainly a lot of them who are very talented and who are putting out some excellent music. And yes, there are also plenty of "old-timers" who have been around for a long time and who continue to produce quality stuff.

But of the younger group, many of whom are terrific artists, how many of them are writing consistently great songs with lyrics that are anywhere near as sophisticated and memorable as those by Dylan, Simon, Morrison, et al? For example, I really like Billy Strings a lot and he he’s written some fine songs, but has he come up with a Tom Thumb’s Blues or Rave on John Donne or Me & Julio? Do the young songwriters of today write stuff that you can listen to over and over again and find something new to appreciate every time? Maybe they are, but I haven’t heard them yet.

These are four singer/songwriters/guitarist who have been doing it at a high level for decades:  Dave Alvin, Janis Ian, Richard Thompson and Joan Armatrading.

But let's talk Steely Dan.

There's a video where Rick Beato talks about how the song "Aja" changed what he thought popular music could be.  The man loves Steely Dan.  There are numerous video where he gets deep into The Dan Universe.

Becker/Fagen wrote some wonderful lyrics.  Give a listen to "Pearl Of the Quarter", "Glamour Profession", "Cousin Dupree" or "Lunch With Gina".  They were storytellers.

"From the Bottom" has an detailed video of the bass playing on Fagen's "The Nightfly".  If you're serious about the album, it's a must watch.

Disclosure - I'm a 70 year old boomer and I'm becoming crotchety in my old age. Also, I'm a big fan of Beato and I've watched quite a few of his videos. He's a musical expert and he has interviewed many of my favorite musicians.

I have SeriusXM in my car and when I'm on a longer drive I occasionally listen to the current POP station or Hip Hop or another station with new music. The lyrics of many of these songs, especially modern Hip Hop/R&B are absolutely horrible. They are venal, vulgar, misogynistic, and disgusting. Some are just banal but there is a pretty big subset of lyrics that were unimaginable 40 years ago. I drive along at 70n mph with my mouth agape hardly believing that I'm actually hearing what I'm hearing.

If you have SeriusXM or a streaming service where you can play this current music I recommend that you break out of your bubble and listen to this stuff to get a sense of what young people are hearing. As Huey Lewis sang, "Sometimes bad is bad."

poetry makes me mad. It is language that I find interesting, and language is there to convey meaning. Otherwise, why bother?

The problem is this : "meaning" is conveyed in language not on an uni-lateral way but in a multi-polar way ...Meaning exist not on one level but is articulated on many levels, from phonology to pragmatic levels...

Grounded in biology and in the body gestures rythms and vocal gestures rythms and tones are the poetical level of meaning...

Then there is a syntaxical level in speech which has nothing to do with the concept of syntax in the formal language, because human speech syntax is not a "formal" machine even if it can be analysed formally as Chomsky did. ( Gustave Guillaume goes deeper here)

At the top there is analogy which is irreducible to logic no more than metaphor... ( A.I. use statistical engines to decodes it not logic)

The scientific prosaic meaning is a mere half part of language meaning...The most efficient part but not the only and more important meaningfulness...( try to imagine a world of robot communication to understand my point , human social fabric is not a hive )

What is poetry ? Not non sense as superficial look can put it, but deep meaning : " a felt change of consciousness" caused by the way we use words said Owen Barfield in "poetic diction"..

Litterature is as powerful as equations.

Why did Grothendieck used the metaphor"dessins d’enfants" to describe the mathematical concept of some schemes ? Because it speak more directly about the meaning intended and it convey the way the mathematician mind felt the change from the top of the geometrical iceberg draught by a child to his inside hidden depth.

https://www.ams.org/notices/200307/what-is.pdf

The meaning of poetry even when i dont understand the Farsi language in a song for example is there anyway between sounds...I "understand" it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS065XPSCFc

My point was that poetry in popular music is as much important as music and part of it...

If the language degenerate in a culture the rest degenerate, even if we had A.I. and especially if we had A.I.

When we speak badly or partially staying on one level instead of using language multidimensionality we think badly...

There is a difference between a bad journaslist and a great poet or a great thinker, but a common point : linear annoying day to day prose.

«We never fall in love "in" prose»--Groucho Marx