Do You Identify With Lyrics, And Ifso, How?

The overlap between singer and narrator can go all the way from nothing (I don't imagine Scott Walker as putting across 'himself' in any way) to almost total (I always see Lou Reed's songs as 'Lou out doing stuff').

― And when you f--- up, you go backwards (snoball), Wednesday, February 5, 2014 2:38 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well there are theoretical reasons why even a narrator who says "I am Lou Reed" is not the living breathing Lou Reed of the present but a kind of frozen, fictionalized Lou Reed of a particular moment. But yeah, there are certainly times when the narrator of a song has a much less psychic distance, or w/e, from the singer.

Considering that the "singer" and the speaker of the song are not the same thing, I think this question is largely phrased all wrong.

― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Wednesday, February 5, 2014 7:27 PM

Yes, this is poorly phrased, but by "singer" I do not necessarily mean the human being being the actor behind the character, if there is a disparity, I mean the *character* who appears in the narrative. I definitely mean "narrator" rather than "author".

I think also maybe i quite like lyrics that are about working, i guess in country or folk

I dont like so much lyrics about characters observed from afar

Also I identify with the feelings expressed in songs even where the actual facts/experiences described are far from mine.

when BB and i talked about this, it was kind of like: when we sang along to our favourite songs, were we imagining ourselves as the singer or the subject? (assuming the song has those pronouns in it at all...)

and yeah, it can differ from song to song, but what struck me was that for me it's disproportionately weighted towards imagining myself as the narrator of the song and actually, hardly ever as the person the song is addressing. appreciating phonetics/wordplay and a song's narrative are probably the next two most important.

it's a qn i've thought about for a while, also thought that when there was a kerfuffle over beyoncé singing "bow down bitches" this was unspoken at the heart of it - when it comes to rap braggadocio (which bey was using in that song) i think the idea is that listeners identify with the narrator, drawing on the artist's power to be the one telling people in their life to bow down, bitches. whereas i felt a lot of the people who needed smelling salts imagined they were being sung to, they were the people being told to bow down, bitches.

another word that needs interrogating is "identify" - i don't know what that actually means tbh. "this song strikes a chord in me because it speaks to my exact life experiences"? occasionally but not actually that often. "this song strikes a chord in me because i recognise it as telling truth about life experiences i have encountered, both in my life and elsewhere" more often, "this song is resonant in ways i can't quite explain" also common. "this song speaks to life experiences i wish i'd had"? "idealised life experiences that make me feel commonality with others?" "idealised/exaggerated life experiences that are like a superhero version of me"? etc

pertinent post that i happened to be re-reading recently on tori amos's "marianne":

Yeah i love that bit. Tori lyrics are easy to sneer at but what I always found fascinating is the way in which (and this album is maybe the pinnacle for that) her performance of them made them feel absolutely bursting with meaning and significance. Like here the way she reaches up towards "sailors" as if this is key (key to what??), and the fact that Ed is watching her every sound (??) seems like the most intimate realisation ever.

― Tim F, Wednesday, September 2, 2009 11:19 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xxxp ^^^ for me there always has to be some kind of 'closeness', even if that's done through the singer's performance rather than the lyrics. ABBA's 'Nina, Pretty Ballerina' is the first example that springs to mind. The lyrics aren't specific about the narrator's relationship to the subject, but the way the singers perform the song imply that they at least know the subject fairly well.

Thank you, Lex, for explaining that so much better.

And yeah, I'm glad that you interrogated the word "identity/identify" because I do think that was the word that I struggled with most when trying to articulate this question.

I was just listening to Yeezus in the gym and somehow New Slaves was really resonating with me even though the experiences it describes are obviously not factually similar to mine. Maybe I just identify with an angry "damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't" feeling in some generalized kind of way.

OTOH, a song that randomly popped into my mind - Jim O'Rourke's Halfway to a Threeway, obviously I don't identify with the lyrics, but there's something compelling about them because of the delayed epiphany/revulsion you feel when you realize what they're slyly about.

another word that needs interrogating is "identify"

Oh, good point. I was thinking of it in terms of oh i like that, but in strict terms I dont think I identify with any

"this song speaks to life experiences i wish i'd had"? "idealised life experiences that make me feel commonality with others?" "idealised/exaggerated life experiences that are like a superhero version of me"? etc

This I think is really salient, because this is behind a huge amount of music that I have loved, especially Spacerock (Hawkwind, LOL) because really, I am not a giant Texan spacerock superhero leaping planets with my interstellar riffs, but wow, yeah, when I listen to Bob Calvert or Brandon Curtis, man, I reeeeeaaaaally wish I was?

Like, no one can listen to Lemmy and even contemplate *being* Lemmy, but listening to Lemmy and wishing you were that superhero comic book character, wow, yeah, that's a thing.

"Identify" can mean as little as "I have felt this feeling" which can be universal, and transcend even lyrics, if the emotion is strongly expressed.

Or "Identify" can mean "I have had these experiences, I have this same background, inhabit the same context".

When I said I had trouble finding things to identify with, I meant I had trouble with the latter, rather than the former.

But I guess one of the questions is also not just "do you feel like the singer or the subject" but also do you need to be able to access or conceive of yourself as being *able* to access those experiences/emotions in order to identify with a song? Or can you just identify with characters, as if in a novel, you share little reference with?

Like, what do sr8 dudes feel when listening to Beyonce? Do they identify with her, that's an interesting question to me.

Now that I think about it, I guess in addition to having a range of feelings about lyrics, I'm not particularly inclined to catalogue/analyze/share my feelings about the complexity. It's kinda private.

that's actually the crux of it for me (and also one of the reasons i've always abandoned the idea of this thread myself despite the question popping into my head periodically for YEARS)

xp

I would sometimes sing Super Bass with my car windows rolled down and the volume at a moderately high level.

excuuuse me, you're a hell of a guy, you kno i rly got a thing for american guyzzz

i mean--sigh!--sickening eyez, i can tell that you're in touch with your feminine side

Had an ex who was *obsessed* with Beyonce, but he *always* listened to her with the idea that he was her boyfriend/person that was being sung to or about. It kinda worried me that he could never make the jump to relating to her as describing his own emotions. It struck me as a lost opportunity. It gives a richer experience. (I certainly didn't always see myself as the girl in dudely songs, I saw myself as Sonic Boom more often than the druggy babe.)

I'm sorry you don't feel like sharing, but I respect your privacy, LL.

Hmm, I have never really considered how I relate to Beyonce songs. However I can certainly think of Joni Mitchell songs where I relate to the narrator.

Beginning to feel something of a sociopath as realizing I dont identify/align with narrator or subject at all.

I guess when I listen to lyrics I tend to identify with the narrator/the person singing the song, but more at the level of imaging myself performing that role, rather than actually being the person, if that makes sense? Most of the music I listen to is not performed in a very 'naturalistic' way, so it's more like watching a movie, and imaging myself as an actor playing one of the roles in the film, rather than imagining actually being the character they are playing? I'm not explaining this very well

I identify with Dusty Springfield, even though she was a lesbian woman and I'm a nominally het although now mostly ace man. I don't even know where to begin picking that apart.

Some songs I can relate to, and others I can't. That doesn't stop me from singing them. I mean...I guess this thread is not geared towards my 'type'.

It's like when Reggie from Black Kids sings "you are the girl that i've been dreaming of ever since I was a little girl". Then he sings, "I'm biting my tongue, two, he's kissin' on you". I don't read too deeply into mixing genders and the gender of the singer and stuff. It's not an 'art form' (?) I'm all that interested in.

I guess when I listen to lyrics I tend to identify with the narrator/the person singing the song, but more at the level of imaging myself performing that role, rather than actually being the person, if that makes sense? Most of the music I listen to is not performed in a very 'naturalistic' way, so it's more like watching a movie, and imaging myself as an actor playing one of the roles in the film, rather than imagining actually being the character they are playing? I'm not explaining this very well

― soref, Wednesday, February 5, 2014 8:32 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this def makes sense to me

madonna "die another day" always played that role to me, so many times i imagine myself in my own music video when listening to it on headphones

i identify a lot with Yonce when i'm singing along/listening

in fact pretty much any kind of music that i like to sing to (sing in my head maybe) i am identifying with the theoretical singer on some level, and this is true of some stuff in languages i don't understand too

I do think of myself as a bad bitch, fwiw

I identify with the singer qua singer, the subject, the object, or sometimes just like the story w/o being particularly able to identify w/it. If the the song is catchy enough, I may just ignore the lyrics and go with something else. I contain multitudes (though perhaps rather manageable ones).

reminds me of the chris rock bit on women enjoying indefensible lyrics: "he ain't talking about me"

i too think of myself as a bad bitch and encourage everyone to

Like, what do sr8 dudes feel when listening to Beyonce? Do they identify with her, that's an interesting question to me.

I don't identify w/ Beyonce at all fwiw, but only because she's insanely rich.

I think there's a bit in one of Bill Drummond's books where he talks about his love of these 50s/60s female singers whose songs are all about weakness, and abject desperation and feeling out of control of your feelings and life, and angsts a bit as to whether it's sexist of him appreciate this music. I don't remember if he talks about whether he identifies with the singers, but I love a lot of this same music and definitely identify with the singer/narrator when listening to it.

Beyonce is singing about the trials within relationships, about having children, about your public sense of yourself, about doubt...it's pretty fucken easy to relate ime

something with female singers singing about relationships tho is also like watching myself in a mirror, a sense of critiquing myself or my past thru the song as well as sharing its emotions, Joni is another great example of this, sometimes i can be her narrative voice and the nob-head she's laughing at at the same time

I don't think I identify with most lyrics at all in this sense. Lyrics interest me more in how they come together with the music to express an idea or a feeling, the appreciation of which doesn't really require identification with the specific dramatic personae as much as with the nuance of feeling depicted in the song. The Hegelian thing about surrender to musical communication rings true for me, roughly, but this doesn't mean identifying with characters in the song but rather with the song as a whole.

I don't know if this makes sense of the distinction for anyone else though.

That kind of makes sense to me, except I would say I'm focused on the emotions evoked, which are overwhelmingly dictated by the music more than the lyrics, in my case, at least most of the time. And sometimes the song, for me, just isn't "about" what the lyrical content says it's about. I may identify with some of the lyrics (probably from the point of view of the persona "speaking") if they support my emotional sense of the song, but am also pretty capable of just pushing them aside if they don't.

the future is giving me hints and the past is mocking me in code through lyrics. the rest of you are all just figments of my imagination

On one level, the interplay of gender and sexuality and relating to romantic lyrics regardless of the gender/orientation of singer and listener is really interesting and worth talking about.

I far prefer identifying with the protagonist or pursuer in a love song, and really have to stretch to imagine myself being the "beloved" of a love song no matter what the genders, because it's just not an experience I've had much. I've always been weirdly drawn to songs where women sing about other women, though, but it doesn't have to be necessarily sexual. (In fact, probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks to ever identifying as a lesbian, even before the whole "shagging dudes" thing, was that lesbian music was pretty universally terrible. Like, seriously, if you have the choice of going to a lesbian bar playing all Ani and Tracey or a gay bar where they're playing house and Hi-NRG and I Feel Love, come on, what kind of choice is that?) But this might just be because I feel like most women write female characters a great deal more convincingly than most men ever do, cliche cliche etc. But many of the female writers whose work I relate to best have also talked about feeling conflicted about their own gender - I was recently reading Kristin Hersh's autobiography, and got to the chapter where she talked about not feeling like a girl at all, but more like a mixed up girl/boy creature who was both and neither, and I was just "Oh god, another one. Am I just drawn to them?" But oddly many of the woman to woman songs I've related to the most are singing about sisters - I don't even have a blood sister. But actual sisters are far far complicated and complex relationships than the whole "~Sisterhood~" thing that gets much abused in some circles.

The Bill Drummond thing is interesting, and I appreciate that he interrogates the sexism of this (Oh Bill, I L U!) but I think that feeling out of control and longing-for-surrender is something inherent in the ecstasy of pop music, rather than a female-coded thing. Weakness and abject desperation in the face of romantic feelings or rejection... hmmm, this is a trope in music and lyrical poetry of many genders throughout time. I would only worry if someone were only drawn to it in female artists, and ignored the male artists that mined the same vein? With Drummond, I doubt that's the case.

I am not going to get into the semantics of "bad bitches" yet again on another thread. The word is highly gendered and codes differently in the mouths of women and gay men vs straight men. There's a difference between identifying and co-opting sometimes, and I don't know that it's really possible for anyone to experience the power of a highly charged word (like bitch) either positively or negatively, when they themselves have never been on the receiving end of it in its original sense.

I don't think I identify with most lyrics at all in this sense. Lyrics interest me more in how they come together with the music to express an idea or a feeling, the appreciation of which doesn't really require identification with the specific dramatic personae as much as with the nuance of feeling depicted in the song. The Hegelian thing about surrender to musical communication rings true for me, roughly, but this doesn't mean identifying with characters in the song but rather with the song as a whole.

This is really interesting to me, and I'd like to read more like this. Like, it's the entire situation depicted in the song which you are appreciating, rather than any specific character embedded within that situation? Or have I got that completely wrong?

Argh argh argh, I need to dig out this quote (from Hersh again) about lyrics, which I absolutely love:

Songs... don't commit to linear time - they whiz around *all* your memories, collecting them into a goofy pile that somehow seems less goofy because it's set to music. Songs're weird; they tell the future and they tell the past, but they can't seem to tell the difference.

Love that bolded bit, that always described the best lyrics to me.

Great thread.

It's rare for me to identify with purely lyrics qua lyrics; when I do identify, it's with more like empathy at the emotion that's being inspired in me, which may be, and often is, more to do with musical factors - melody, harmony - but not always. Obviously they're symbiotic; take the same words and sing them differently and I may care for them a lot of not at all.

Seldom like third-person commentaries - mid-90s Blur, Kinks, etc - though sometimes I can appreciate the craft or observation of politics (Common People - though that's about the narrator's emotion, and empathy with it, maybe).

Often it's a bit of projection; when Mark Hollis sings "versed in Christ should strength desert me", I don't identify specifically (as an atheist not versed in Christ), but I can understand the emotion being expressed. It's about projection and empathy with emotions I've not felt, or fear, or remember but vaguely. And that's as much about his he sings if as what is sung. Wtf does "motorcycle emptiness" 'mean' literally? I dunno, but that voice and that melody makes it resonate as a (near abstract) phrase with me on an emotional level.

Weird phone typos.

i identify w/regulate by warren g

from another thread:

For years I read fiction and poetry with the expectation that “connections” with the material were besides the point. I’d empathize with characters and scenarios and study the prose rhythms and mimic them in my own work but that’s it. When I told a friend I was reading George Eliot and h/she would say “Ugh, no, I can’t relate,” I’d recoil. I’d think “What does that have to do with anything? Can’t you use your imagination and enter this complicated mid 19th century rural world?”

When I accepted my sexuality I realized these responses were in part stunted. For some novels and poems my neutrality stemmed from my inability to point at a heterosexual romance and “relate” to it. To some extent I still do it and as some of you know I’m still loath to consider intentions as a valid way to judge work, but I’m aware. For a gay Hispanic man in his thirties the act of reading demands a constant negotiation among contrary impulses, animal curiosity about the way literature is assembled, and awareness of privilege. I still have a lot to learn.

Lyrics are both more and less complicated. "Less" because thanks to my graduate degree from the Bernard Sumner School of Verse Writing I trust a vocalist's timbre (at the very least) and an eye for the arresting image regardless of logic, "more" because I admire many songwriters precisely because their lyrics serve the music and are beautiful in their own right.

"Relating" to them is another matter entirely.

as soon as i began writing songs, i also began identifying with the writer of any song i heard. we used to have lengthy discussions in my band about whether the drums should be mixed from the drummer's perspective (snare and hat on the left, floor tom on the right) or the audience perspective (i.e. the reverse). our drummer would fight for the former; the rest of us would want the latter. in the end, who really cares?, but that was basically the drummer wanting to identify with himself. i identify with writers and with singers, who, if they're not the same person, often are the writer's avatar. i like to insert myself in any song as i like as writer and performer, which is to say, i don't think i'm identifying with the lyric so much as i'm identifying with the creation of the lyric. but also the music. it's hard-to-impossible for me to separate lyric and music. what i like about lyrics tends to be less what they say and more how they use the language and grammar of music to say it.

the "identification" for me is part fantasy, but also part studying from within. it makes no difference if the singer is male or female, young or old, or singing in my language. i have been madonna, i have been patrick leonard, i have been neil young, i have been miranda lambert, i have been sky ferreira, i have been max martin. it makes all the difference in the world, though, if i like the song. if i don't, the fantasy goes cold, fast.

I

go back and forth between identifying with subject and object depending on circumstances I will would describe

except I can find no pattern to it, Nico version of I'll keep it with mine has been both, same for Summertime

normally I identify with the subject; if I identify with the object it's actively uncomfortable (sung *at* is probably closer to the feeling), and if a song switches from subject to object for whatever reason it's enough to make me never be able to hear it again. (right up there with "it reminds me of an ex" and "I reviewed it and I am embarrassed about the review")

there's no easy, single answer here. more often than not, i look at lyrics as crafted things existing outside the author. they inevitably express an authorial sensibility, but that sensibility isn't necessarily expressed in a direct manner. it doesn't matter to me whether or not stephen merritt really hates the california girls (or whether thurston moore really wants to kill them). i'm more interested in what's revealed by the artistic choices, what the artist thinks is funny, valuable, contemptible or whatever.

another way to put this is to say that i relate not to the characters and situations depicted in songs - or even to their implied narrators - but to the authorial mindset behind them. i suppose this comes very close to BB's I don't identify with either singer or subject, I just listen to them as little stories or vignettes, but i wanted to place emphasis on the extent to which (authorial) identification is still important.

but that's just a rule of thumb. the more precisely and poignantly a lyric seems to express or portray something relatable, the more i DO get sucked into the foreground story. whether it's killer mike or belle & sebastian, i'm not immune to identification with the story told (subject or object, it depends).

the subject/object distinction seems irresolvable to me. shel silverstein's "the ballad of lucy jordan" devastates me (at least when sung by marianne faithfull) because i so strongly identify with the object, the "she". the POV voice matters only when i notice how lucy's story is being framed and to what end, and i'm usually too caught up in the surface color to notice such things.

when i listen to liz phair's exile in guyville, otoh, i'm much more likely to identify with the voice, the protagonist, the unnamed "i". though she tells the tale, i suppose she's also ultimately the albums's object, the character most prominently portrayed. whatever the case, i can just as easily relate to teller as tale, and deciding where to place that emphasis is a big part of songwriting, imo.

I think Jaÿ-Z might have a few dance club friendly songs.

In fact I literally heard multiple Jay-Z songs at a dance club last night.

(Specifically "I Just Want to Love U" and "Tom Ford")

Did you hear them outside of an English spealing country?

In here the only Jay Z song I've ever heard in a club or a party is Empire State of Mind. Maybe a couple of his collaborations with kanye west. I mean people do know who Jay Z is but they are more aware of him as beyonce's husband than of any of his songs.

Which is apparently his only #1 hit on the US charts as well? Or am I reading it wrong:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z_discography#Singles

I think the situation here in Finland is pretty much the same as what Moka describes. The only rap and country tunes that become big hits are ones with a catchy chorus and/or a dance-friendly beat, few people care about (or even know; generally Finns have a good knowledge of English, but rap slang often goes above their heads) what the vocalists are saying. And "Empire State of Mind" is the only Jay-Z tune I've heard played in a club in here too, if you don't count clubs that specialize in rap.

And ever since the early 00s Finnish rap music has been more popular than American rap... Which only makes sense, since the language the rappers use and the subjects they talk about are more familiar to Finns than those in American rap.

Which is apparently his only #1 hit on the US charts as well? Or am I reading it wrong:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z_discography#Singles

This is true but unreflective of his widespread and long lasting popularity in the US. The only rap artists who have sold more here are Tupac and Eminem.

But my point is I'm not sure in what universe something like the aforementioned "I Just Wanna Love U" doesn't have "a catchy chorus and a dance-friendly beat".

So as not to derail the Pfork thread…

To those among us who heavily skew towards the lyrical side of the admittedly porous words/music divide, do you read poetry at all? If so, how often? And if not, why?

I'm a lyrics person but I don't read poetry all that much, and I prefer lyrics that sound like lyrics to lyrics that sound like poetry that then happened to get set to music. If that makes sense.

Like, during all those debates about whether Dylan deserved his Nobel, I saw a lot of people copy/pasting lyrics to try to prove they were poetry, which seemed really pointless to me - they're not going to have the same impact on the page, and if they do, what's the point of this being a song in the first place?

To those among us who heavily skew towards the lyrical side of the admittedly porous words/music divide, do you read poetry at all? If so, how often? And if not, why?

A question that might interest me is "if so, what kind of poetry?". I'm no literary scholar (and obv don't skew towards the lyrical side of that divide) but I wonder if popular song lyric might be a sort of bastion for 'traditional' poetry in the sense of more strictly metrical rhymed verse. When I do get into song lyrics, what I get from them usually does feel qualitatively and experientially different from what I get out of most modern poetry (but maybe less different from what I get out of Wordsworth?).

Half-baked thoughts

I’ve typed this so many times but lyrics =/= poetry— in fact, historically, “good poetry” suffers when set to music, and composers are generally advised to pick lesser work so as to have something that a musical setting can improve upon. Lyrics can be more oblique, take more time to transpire, can have intention coloured by the musical accompaniment, and (in the recorded medium) are performed; the specific mood created by Megan saying “enh” is something for which there is no equivalent in poetry

Good points; the comparison would seem to be limited. The relationship between music and text is definitely what I want to consider any time I've analysed songs.

I perennially cite Kathleen Hanna singing “everything you think and / everything you feel is alright alright alright alright all riiight” as being “The Best Lyric Ever” just because it’s a perfect example of simple-ish words being elevated by musical context and performance into a powerful sentiment that is unique to songwriting, like “poetry could never” because poetry is a different medium

I used to, haven't much lately but that's more a function of spare time than preference -- that said, a non-trivial amount of poetry was meant to be read aloud

The two poems I do find myself frequently thinking of in the context of rock/pop/etc. are "Dover Beach" and "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock." "Dover Beach" because it shares so many of the preoccupations of 20th century music - I feel like you can draw a line from "Dover Beach" straight through "September 1, 1939" all the way to "Gimme Shelter" and "The Boy in the Bubble" and so on, all these apocalyptic songs about people clinging together as the world outside gets worse and worse. And then Prufrock because it seems in so many ways to be the model for what you can do with stream of consciousness and description and storytelling in rock lyrics - like, I can't imagine "Madame George" or "Desolation Row" existing without Prufrock.

I mean, this is probably obvious, but the title does say "love song"

No

at the age of 40 I still fundamentally do not get what "identifying with something" means. Do people really imagine they are characters in songs or films for that matter?

their band could be my life

Thanks, all, for your thoughtful answers (to my question – I'm mostly ignoring the thread's kick-off).

I didn't meant to suggest that lyrics and poetry are made of the exact same stuff. As soon as you set words to music, they are transformed by it (and this goes both ways, of course); they are no longer 'just words'. That said, grafting them onto a purely verbal medium (in an album review, for instance) remains a perennial possibility – lyrics can be quoted without being sung, and some lend themselves quite well to pixels or paper. So while I tend to think of lyrics in terms of consubstantiality (words and music, forever and ever), there's an underlying flightiness and a fragility to this encounter that, in many cases, makes it all too easy to divorce one element from the other, ushering us back to square one.

The musicality of poetry is an even thornier affair… Eliot, who not uncoincidentally wrote The Four Quartets and an essay titled 'The Music of Poetry', had a fine ear, especially in his earlier works (although you could argue that the perceived clunkiness of some of his later poems was deliberate – prosaic phrasing as a means of approximating high modernist dissonance). At the most fundamental level, the musicality of poetry also happens to be what makes poetry, well, poetic (pace less common strains meant for the eyes), hearkening back to the Orphic/Sapphic model: a noticeable emphasis on the phonetic potential of language and the invention of structures that override or at the very least play with conventional discourse. At its best (in my estimation, at least) poetry appears to supply its own music, which ties into fgti's comment about lesser works being more pliable from the composer/musician's perspective: the lacunae call for a semblance of completion.

I don't really know where I'm going with this…

Oh, and funny you should mention 'Dover Beach', Lily. Samuel Barber made a setting of it – it was one of his very first compositions, if memory serves.