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BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about
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BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about |
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Subject: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: PaulM Date: 22 Jan 02 - 11:41 AM I love 'Thrasher' by Neil Young. I won't post the lyrics because they are very easy to find with a search engine. Anyhow, my point is that I always thought this song was about me. I don't mean that Neil wrote it for me, or even knew who I was (am) It just made a lot of sense in terms of how my life was, and as such it was 'my song' Recently, I found out that it was about Neil's split from Crosby, Stills and Nash. It means a lot less to me now. Anyone else understand what I mean? Paul |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull Date: 22 Jan 02 - 11:49 AM no I 've no idea what you mean.john |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: PaulM Date: 22 Jan 02 - 11:51 AM john, let's be honest, you have very little idea what anything means...
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Clinton Hammond Date: 22 Jan 02 - 11:51 AM Kinda ya... I can grock that, Paul... But as an aside, have you heard Stepehn Fearing's cover of Thrasher??? Feckin' WOW! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: MMario Date: 22 Jan 02 - 12:03 PM Paul - it seems sad that finding out what the song was about to the composer destroys your interpretation. I hold with the belief that music; like paintings, poetry and other art - are in the eye of the beholder; or in this case, the ear and mind of the beholder. Art is an interpretive media. Regardless of the intentions of the artist the result is filtered through the perceptions of the audience. if the song has meaning for you, it shouldn't matter what others see in it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Morticia Date: 22 Jan 02 - 12:27 PM Seal ( an artist with a brief career but I liked him) said he would never put lyrics on his album notes as he preferred people to make their own interpretations of what he was singing. Thus, if you heard him sing "Hilda's Ogden's haircurlers" or whatever, and that made sense to you, that was just fine by him. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Mr Red Date: 22 Jan 02 - 12:42 PM certainly illustrates the lyricists art. If it can touch you. It also demonstrates the listeners art of picking what suit them. I think it's called feeling, as opposed to reasoning. Its what the genre is all about, saying things with a smattiering of cypher, cryptic inferences, saying things in a way we wouldn't in real life, we fill in the dots. Real life can be boring, do we want to be uplifted by more of the same? Can't say I particularly like Neil Young but there you go, can't all see the same fantasies. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: GUEST,John Hernandez Date: 22 Jan 02 - 01:03 PM I'm still trying to figure out what the Hokey Pokey is all about. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: swirlygirl Date: 22 Jan 02 - 01:07 PM I can listen to a Tori Amos song and think that parts of it or all of it is about me in some way or other but even though i know why she wrote it, it doesn't change my feeling about it... I always want to know why she writes what she does...it's the bane of my life sometimes!! Christ, I'm still trying to figure half of it out!! :) xxx |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: SharonA Date: 22 Jan 02 - 01:51 PM What MMario and Mr. Red said, goes for me too. I attended a Bob Franke songwriting workshop last year, during which he said that the connection that a song makes between songwriter and listener should ideally be in the middle – literally between them, rather than (a) in the mind of the songwriter and the experiences and/or feelings he's writing about, or (b) in the mind of the listener and his own feelings or experiences. In other words, the point of contact, where the listener is "touched" by the song, is the point at which the listener can relate to what the songwriter is saying and the songwriter can relate to the listener – to humankind. In the case of "Thrasher", PaulM says "It just made a lot of sense in terms of how my life was, and as such it was 'my song' ." Now, the writing of the song may have been triggered by Neil Young's split from Crosby, Stills and Nash, but obviously the emotions expressed are core emotion of the human spirit that any of us may experience. PaulM, I don't see any reason why the song should not mean just as much to you, or perhaps more, now that you know that the song was borne of a gut-wrenching, life-altering event in someone's own life (and not just made up to make money, as so many pop-songs are!). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Herga Kitty Date: 22 Jan 02 - 03:19 PM I went to a song-writing workshop at Whitby, at which it was suggested that a good song is one that can be interpreted on different levels ... most songs come out of some personal experience but the ones that last, last because they have a meaning for people other than the author. Some of the really prolific writers can't even remember that they wrote a particular song... I always thought that Absent Friends was about the loss of a lover until I heard that Keith Hancock wrote it after the death of his father.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 22 Jan 02 - 04:02 PM When you write a song you are likely enough thinking about some particular set of circumstances. But that's just the starting off point. It's a way of getting in touch with some feelings that are relevant to other circumstances as well.
Interpreting what a song (or a poem, or a picture) is about is something that other people have to do as well, and their interpretations and the way they apply it to other situations are just as valid.
Often the first understanding you get of what a song is capable of being about comes from other people.A wise songwriter who is asked what the song is about will answer "You tell me what you think, and then I'll tell you what I think." And in that sense anyway I'd think Neil Young is a wise songwriter. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: GUEST,PaulM Date: 22 Jan 02 - 07:58 PM Thanks everyone, interesting points. I guess:
Down the windy halls of friendship
But me I'm not stopping there,
still mean something to me, not that I get to see motels with heated pools and bars *grin* Clinton, Thanks for the heads up regarding Stephen Fearing. I do however have to say that he just seems a pale Richard Thompson impression. I have only heard 30 second clips on Amazon, though Paul
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Bert Date: 23 Jan 02 - 12:07 AM I would say that if you don't know what a song is about then it's a piss poor song. I thought that that obscure crap went out in the Sixties. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: rangeroger Date: 23 Jan 02 - 12:38 AM The first time I ever saw John Prine live was Spring 1986 Strawberry music festival.As part of his gig he did a song writing workshop at the amphitheater stage that was unbelievable. He went into these sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious explanations of why he wrote his songs. IE;He was a postman in a Chicago suburb and when he delivered Veteran's checks every month he wondered what that person had done to earn that check and what would they do with the money.Voila, Sam Stone. I love to know why the songs I really like were written. rr |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Rolfyboy6 Date: 23 Jan 02 - 12:48 AM The realy good songs are the ones which exist on multiple levels right down to the subconcious. They deliver what the songwriter meant, what the song means to the listener, cultural/situational information, and tap into the mythic (and I don't mean that in the Wagnerian sense). I'm still trying to figure out why I like that silly old hoedown tune "Bile Them Cabbage Down." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Jim Dixon Date: 23 Jan 02 - 10:11 AM PaulM: I think you have just learned something important about yourself and about art. The more you reflect on this experience, the more you may learn. Many years ago, I read a book that consisted of many short folktales, collected because (according to the editor's preface) they all had some point to make about human nature or development. They were somewhat like Aesop's fables, but they didn't have explicit "morals" tacked onto them. You had to figure out your own interpretation. My reaction to the stories varied. Some seemed very profound and wise. Others seemed true but trivial, almost childish. Some baffled me and didn't seem to have any point at all. One story especially annoyed me because the point it seemed to be making was one I regarded as absolutely wrong. Whenever I read a story that I particularly liked, I put a penciled check mark next to its title in the table of contents. Several years later, I found the book on my bookshelf and decided to read it again. Enough time had passed so that most of the stories seemed "fresh," as if I was reading them for the first time. Again, my reaction to the stories varied a great deal. But guess what! My reaction did not at all correspond to the check marks in the table of contents. Many of the stories that I had previously checked seemed to have moved over to the "true but trivial" category. And many of the stories that I did not check the first time around now seemed especially clever, important, and profound, making me think, "How could I have missed this?" MORAL: (Well, maybe you'd better figure out your own moral.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: SharonA Date: 23 Jan 02 - 11:08 AM So, Jim, you mean that my parents were right when they told me as a kid, "You'll understand when you're older"? Eww! *G* |
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Subject: Not wanting to know... From: Clinton Hammond Date: 23 Jan 02 - 11:14 AM PaulM... Given that RT was a huge influence on young Stephen Fearing, your recognising of the similarities is not totally off base... "Pale Imitation"??? Well, I can only say this... I find that Stephen Fearing is a lot more consistent in his work... RT runs very hot and very cold, with very little in the middle... And well, I've never heard RT play guitar like Fearing can... that guy is WAY too talented! LOL!!!! Keep in touch, and I could send ya an mp3 of Fearings cover of Thrasher if ya want... Better than a 30 second clip, that's fer sure, mate! ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: PaulM Date: 23 Jan 02 - 02:55 PM Thanks a lot, Clinton. That'd be great. I'll send you a PM Paul |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: leprechaun Date: 24 Jan 02 - 12:17 AM Once my buddy at work left a sandwich on his desk and just to screw with him I took a big friendly bite out of it and left the remainder there on display for him. He made such a good pretense of being mad it made me feel like the words to Nell Flaherty's Drake were about me. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Little Hawk Date: 24 Jan 02 - 08:24 PM Thrasher is an amazing song, and Stephen Fearing's cover of it is great. He covered it because he thinks it's an amazing song too. I had a conversation with him about that after his last appearance in Orillia, where he will again be playing soon, at the Opera House. We both figure it's the best thing Neil Young ever wrote. There are so many universal images in Thrasher that it can touch a person on many levels. That's the way Dylan tends to often write, so I sort of consider it one of Neil Young's "Dylan" songs, so to speak (and he was certainly influenced by Bob in no small way). Whatever he was thinking about consciously, he tapped into some very universal feelings and images in those lyrics. Thrasher will never be much about Neil Young's breakup with CSN in my mind, regardless of whether or not that's what drove him to write it. It's a song of heroic dimensions, reflecting light on the whole drama and tragedy of life in the late 20th century. I wouldn't worry too much about what Neil had in mind on the conscious level, Paul. There were other levels happening there too. The fact that he felt very strongly about the situation is what tapped him into those other levels. That's what I figure. Bert, go suck on a cactus. (*Grin*) - LH
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Peg Date: 25 Jan 02 - 12:01 AM swirly; I started reading this thread and as I scrolled down I found myself thinking that songs by Tori Amos affected me the same way....and at that moment I read your post! Funny. I think lots of Tori's lyrics have that effect on people. Have you seen her in concert? Amazing; but you do get these women who will scream while she is singing cuz they "identify" so strongly with her...very rude and annoying...
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Subject: RE: BS: Not wanting to know what a song is about From: Little Hawk Date: 25 Jan 02 - 09:32 PM Those kind of women are annoying in any audience... An artist whose lyrics always fascinated me is Tanita Tikaram. Her first 3 albums are extraordinary...it's a writing style unlike anyone else's that I know of. Plus the music is great, and complements the lyrics beautifully. - LH |