Modern Rock #1 Hits of 1995

yeah i mean quoting lyrics, whether to admire or ridicule, is good fun and all but using it to 'prove' an argument about the record's worth is basically the lowest form of music criticism

lol gimme a hierarchy of music criticism sd - does talking about form or composition ever come into it, or is it mainly cultural-crit?

xpost

See, I have to stop you there because (and I may be severely in the minority here) I actually find a lot of Guns N' Roses lyrics (particularly Use Your Illusion-era) to be surprisingly thoughtful.

yeah i mean quoting lyrics, whether to admire or ridicule, is good fun and all but using it to 'prove' an argument about the record's worth is basically the lowest form of music criticism

lol gimme a hierarchy of music criticism sd - does talking about form or composition ever come into it, or is it mainly cultural-crit?

― cosi fan whitford (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, May 25, 2012 12:31 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

uh yeah, i was taking a stance against cultural crit, duh

there was an undeniable devolution from Bon Scott and The Real S Dot Tyler and David Lee Roth writing these kind of over-the-top but ultimately witty and fairly well constructed dirty limericks to some of the "she's my cherry pie" shit that followed in their footsteps, but history has already kind of settled that argument so definitively that it's kind of beside the point

there was an undeniable devolution from Bon Scott and The Real S Dot Tyler and David Lee Roth writing these kind of over-the-top but ultimately witty and fairly well constructed dirty limericks to some of the "she's my cherry pie" shit that followed in their footsteps, but history has already kind of settled that argument so definitively that it's kind of beside the point

lol as you can imagine I will still be loudly rejecting history's verdict on this when they lower me into the grave

you're rejecting the verdict that early Aerosmith and VH is better than Poison? huh?

I understand the distinction you're making, I really do, but it's based on a very 2012 assumption that

I don't wanna walk around with you
I don't wanna walk around with you
I don't wanna walk around with you
So why you wanna walk around with me?

always counted as "lyrics that bring some semblance of care to the table." It really wasn't always that way; the things you're saying to dismiss "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" were exactly the things people said about the Ramones in 1976 (or "Love to Love You Baby," for that matter).

xp no no, that's my exact verdict, it's exactly where my complaining comes in - people defending Warrant say "what's not to like, Van Halen was dumb & so's this!" and it's like saying "what? you like to eat Doritos, here's a milkshake with actual human shit in it, same diff!"

Y'all, this convo is so 1989.

every strawman sings a sad, sad song

dude most lyricists I know would look at those Ramones lyrics and see something actually clever going on, something that takes super-careful account of how stuff hits your ear, how syllables ride the rhythm: something that is actually listening to what the words sound like against the tune. "Every Rose," stem to stern, is just like...so profoundly bad, it would be a better song if he'd just spewed obscenities or something, or done nonsense syllables, made animal noises, anything really

every strawman sings a sad, sad song

lol, nice try

yeah i mean lousy lyric writing can be as much an essential part of the character of an enjoyable piece of music as lousy musicianship. it's not all about appreciating how smart and talented the person who made the song is.

vs.

there was an undeniable devolution from Bon Scott and The Real S Dot Tyler and David Lee Roth writing these kind of over-the-top but ultimately witty and fairly well constructed dirty limericks to some of the "she's my cherry pie" shit that followed in their footsteps

"strawman! strawman!" lol

I think one of the main distinctions here is that Van Halen/Wooly Bully doesn't try to pretend it's something it's not.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure some flunky in a dark recording studio lit up by candles said to Bret Michaels over the PA, "Dude, I think you got it."

^^^

where in the hell did this thread go

when the aero rose showed its thorns

I just wanna come right out and state that any general defense of dumb lyrics I posit in this thread should in no way be taken as a defense of "Every Rose Has Its Thorn". Which, frankly, is a shitty song on more levels than just the lyrical.

dude most lyricists I know would look at those Ramones lyrics and see something actually clever going on...

I wonder if Bernie Taupin looked at the Ramones in 1976 and felt like that; I'm going to guess that he was appalled, and also that most of the lyricists you know are under the age of 75 (i.e., were no older than 35 in 1976). Anyway, work calls, pplains is bored, and I feel like only pinch-hitting for xhuxk here anyway. Which is, as everyone's favorite lyricist would say, ironic.

where in the hell did this thread go

my lovely *guitar lick*

it would be a better song if he'd...made animal noises

if the internet weren't what it is & things weren't what they are, not that I'm complaining, I would track this version of "Every Rose" in Garageband right now & yall would get good lols btw

xp no no, that's my exact verdict, it's exactly where my complaining comes in - people defending Warrant say "what's not to like, Van Halen was dumb & so's this!" and it's like saying "what? you like to eat Doritos, here's a milkshake with actual human shit in it, same diff!"

― cosi fan whitford (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, May 25, 2012 12:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a strawman, dude, nobody said this. people made an argument for Poison being acceptable when taken on its own terms, and i pointed out that those terms in no way lead anyone to putting them on equal footing w/ actual great bands, which you took to mean the opposite.

haha clemenza Bernie Taupin has no business accusing anyone of writing terrible lyrics.

pplains is bored

You got me wrong, mang. I haven't listened to Poison all day.

what about last night?

I wonder if Bernie Taupin looked at the Ramones in 1976 and felt like that; I'm going to guess that he was appalled

I bet Shadow Morton, who I rank over Taupin, looked and nodded approvingly

I think we should rank the relative success of all pop songs by how many awkward teenage handjobs they inspired. In that case, "Every Rose" towers over every other song brought up in this discussion. By any other definition however, its a profoundly shitty song.

one of the funniest things about Rock of Love, and there were many, was how "Every Rose" was constantly referenced and as an emotional device, because it was the closest thing Bret could lay claim to as an actual great, enduring song, and the more skanks would quote its lyrics to him or he'd get all misty remembering writing it or whatever the more hilarious its pseudo-profundity would get. and of course, it actually made me like the song more.

referenced and USED as an emotional device

I think we should rank the relative success of all pop songs by how many awkward teenage handjobs they inspired

then pop music was for me a horrible waste of youth

if any of the awkward teen handjobs I received had been inspired by any Poison song but ESPECIALLY "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", I would consider my life to be a failure and I also would have castrated myself sometime in my twenties

the brain-damaged Springsteen antics of their post-Extreme acoustic move "Something To Believe In" may be even more entertaining, though

self handjobs count, of course

okee doke dude it looks to me like you switched horses hard at one point but maybe I missed your point about how

lousy lyric writing can be as much an essential part of the character of an enjoyable piece of music as lousy musicianship

by the way what was more depressing Rock of Love or Flavor of Love

the brain-damaged Springsteen antics of their post-Extreme acoustic move "Something To Believe In" may be even more entertaining, though

oh my God I hate that one too

"addled" best describes "Something to Believe In."

I have something for you to believe in, Bret, it's called "my fists, swinging"

Flavor of Love was definitely more depressing, white trash minstrel shows don't have nearly as much racial tension

^^^ otm

i was always on the same horse but i also wasn't actually involved in the initial defense of "Every Rose" and was jumping on the tangential back end of that convo, so my POV may have been understandably conflated w/ someone else's

i mean tbh i have no idea how your argument here squares with your old rant at me about how eminem's hooks are above criticism because people bought those records by the boatload, but i'm assuming there's an apple and orange somewhere

btw thank you Spotify for playing Bel Biv Devoe directly after "Every Rose" as a palate cleanswer

lol Poison's disastrous blues-influenced 1993 album Native Tongue has a track titled "Richie's Acoustic Thang"

dude, can you smell the corpse?

i mean tbh i have no idea how your argument here squares with your old rant at me about how eminem's hooks are above criticism because people bought those records by the boatload, but i'm assuming there's an apple and orange somewhere

a hook, like the thing that inspires its name, catches people. a good hook catches lots of people. a bad one catches none. the only qualification for a good hook in my mind: is it catchy, memorable, does it draw people in. maybe I hate it ("I Gotta Feeling," say) but it's kind of past being called "a bad hook" I wonder if our disagreement on that didn't have to do with whether the lyrics in the hook were good or bad, but that's a different matter imo. The hook is largely hearing-and-head-nodding function, not a lyrical function. If we're talking about it as a lyrical aspect then I'd be talking about the chorus.

"Every Rose Has Its Thorn" is a pretty catchy hook!

lol I was just about to make that point

good hooks can be very nicely undercut/ruined by, surprise, shitty lyrics

or also if they're by Poison, that will let all the air right out of a good hook

'rose : thorn :: night : dawn' really is some nonsense

incidentally a lot of lyric sites credit the song to GNR