«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

My point is simply that it’s easier to appreciate lyrics that more explicitly address our age and life situation/experience and in so doing, not respond to lyrics that may be well written but simply don’t resonate for us at the time we encounter them.

On a personal level, @stuartk , I could point to many exceptions to that. However, I think that there is also a lot of truth to that statement. But I would also say that if some one writes something (could be song lyrics, poetry, a short story, a book) that somebody else is able to relate to due to situations/experiences, it is probably, at least to a certain degree, well written to be able to strike that chord. At least that’s the way I feel when something that I read or hear strikes that chord in me. "Wow, the author did a pretty good job when s/he wrote that."

Here’s an example of what you just said that is NOT an exception for me:

"When Daddy told me what happened, I couldn’t believe what he’d just said; Sonny shot himself with a .44 and they found him lying on his bed."

You are probably familiar with those lyrics, but in case you are not and in order to give the ARTIST due credit, that was by Lucinda Williams, the title was Pineola, and it was off of the Sweet Old World CD released in early nineteen nintey and something.

That song seemed to speak directly to me, and the first time I ever heard it I remember the hair on the back of my neck standing up. I wanted to tell Ms. Williams how I felt. I am relatively certain that this was not exclusive to me. (And from what I subsequently read, the writing did come from her heart/gut/personal experience and I remember that back when I first started attending her performances, she always used to open with that track.)

Anyway, getting bacl to your statement above, perhaps that’s where Rick Beato comes to that opinion he has (I think badly) stated: the lyrics that speak to him on the basis of personal experiences and life situations come from yesteryear.

But that’s on him.

I started out this response by saying that although I was not discounting it that, for me, there were personal exceptions. An example, for me, would be Bob Dylan. I really cannot relate much at all via experience/situation to what he writes, but the imagery his stuff invokes in me is just killer. And I’d go so far as to say that quite often it is the imagery that lyrics invoke for me that makes the difference. (’For me’ being the operative words.)

But with that typed, and coming back again to what you typed regarding situations and experiences, often the imagery invoked by certain (not all) lyrics are, in fact, images of experiences and situations that I can easily relate to.

@immatthewj 

How much effort have you put into exploring contemporary songwriters? 

I would confess not all that much. But in a way that makes my point. During the 60s and 70s you didn't have to search high and low or put a great deal of effort into finding great songs. In fact, it was hard to miss them. All you had to do was turn on your radio (yes, we listened to the radio back then) and you couldn't avoid hearing great songs.

I'm sure that the young artists suggested by many in this thread are fine songwriters, and I don't think (or at least I hope not) that Mr. Beato is suggesting that all modern songwriting is pathetic. I'm certainly not. But great songs are hard to find these days and I highly doubt that in 20 years, or even 5 or 10, very many people will be listening to the ones written by today's contemporary artists.

By the way, you've brought up singer/songwriters like Ray LaMontagne, Norah Jones and Mia Doi Todd (haven't heard of her), but as you point out, they're all in their 40's and 50's. That's not ancient by any means, but they don't really fall into the category of young contemporary artists.

You miss the point here. Zappa was writing this in an era where non sense in lyrics was not frequent at all like nowadays and he wrote it as "humor"

You know what they say--beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder (or listener).  But putting nonsense in a song and giving it a title doesn't make it anything but nonsense, no matter what year it was composed, and my point is that I wouldn't use it as an example of why yesterday's lyrics are better than those of today.  

But this, of course, is only my opinion.  Unlike Rick Beato, I will not state that Don't Eat The Yellow Snow is pathetically bad when compared to music of today.

My point is simply that it’s easier to appreciate lyrics that more explicitly address our age and life situation/experience and in so doing, not respond to lyrics that may be well written but simply don’t resonate for us at the time we encounter them.

For sure you are right, it is just plain common sense..

But.....

Any Bob Dylan songs for example is well written...

Or Léo Ferré or Jacques Brel in french...

The well done poetic content speak to anyone at any age...

Anybody can feel "ne me quittes pas" powerful words even at 85 years old passed the teen days of girls letting him on the border of the road...

It is certain that song content speak to some specific listener at some age. but this has nothing to do with his lyrical litterary value...And the reason why we listen Brel, Ferré, Dylan or Cohen today is for their litterary and musical quality...The listener age dont matter...

The only one creating songs specifically for teen for example in the yéyé era were the singers working for a market identified by the industry... These songs had no more any interest save for nostalgia and are lying in the graveyard of bad commercial music..

We dont listen the Beatles best songs mainly by nostalgia for our teen years but because they are well written...

By the way, you’ve brought up singer/songwriters like Ray LaMontagne, Norah Jones and Mia Doi Todd (haven’t heard of her), but as you point out, they’re all in their 40’s and 50’s. That’s not ancient by any means, but they don’t really fall into the category of young contemporary artists.

@ezwind , the reason I picked those artists, and others, was because at some point in the course of this thread the statement was made about what was or was not being written in the 21st century. All of those artists I have listed released their first studio album in the early 2000s, with the exception of one who released two in the very late ’90s and then followed up with several releases in the 21stt century.