The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #102349 Message #2073611
Posted By: KeithofChester
11-Jun-07 - 09:51 AM
Thread Name: Why I like folk songs
Subject: RE: Why I like folk songs
And you've got to congratulate the BeeGees for The New York Mining Disaster.
The three part harmony and the very simple backing on that song are stunningly good.
I'm often amused to observe how when a "pop" song occasionally gets re-voiced and rearranged some people's barriers to listening to it come down. I did bump into one or two people that had never listened to Rubber Soul until Rubber Folk appeared.
The converse is also true. Stick a bit of jingle jangle on Sound of Silence and suddenly it is "popular". Lots of the differences between "pop" and (contemporary) "folk" is about the arrangement and the prominence given to the vocals. The ultimate intentions of the writers of the lyrics of Greensleeves and I Want To Hold Your Hand towards the songs' subjects are not that different. The language is however expressed somewhat differently and the arrangements are certainly different.