«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

@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.

@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.

. . . @ezwind , I will just quickly point out that I was not the member who posted that query to you (about how hard have you tried to hear new music), but no-matter.

I remember my childhood in the ’60s and my teen age years in the ’70s, and I can tell you that most of the AM country &/or top 40 stations that were popular in the small town in north central Montana where I grew up were not playing Dylan very often. I doubt my Dad (who did like Lawrence Welk) would have even known who he was if my sisters hadn’t have been playing it in the basement. And I don’t know how they were exposed to it, except my oldest sister was a small town hippy-girl, and I suppose that they were privy to some kind of "underground hippy network" whose reach mangaed to extend to the northern plains.

As far as being exposed to contemporary artists these days, back in the mid ninetys someone at work turned me onto a public radio station, 91.3 WYEP, that got me away from the classic rock stations. I don’t know what their play list is like now, but at the time it was like, "Wow! I never heard of this group/artist! This is real good!" And I bought a lot of CDs due to that radio station. I kept my car radio on 91.3 and the radio at my bench at work as well. At work, except for two other guys who listened to that station, all everyone else knew was classic rock or what passed for country back then (meaning Garth Brooks, et al). I caught a lot of grief over that.