I’ve just read the lyrics of Carried Away by a Moonlight Shadow by Mike Oldfield, and this remind me of a comment about english songs lyrics.
French people are often amazed at english lyrics. Thus, when we learn english, and teachers give us a song to translate, we often think that it doesn’t mean anything, cause it’s doesn’t fit the idea we have about what a song should be!
It seems to me that popular french songs generally tell a story, or develop a feeling or an idea. Its construction is generally the same than french poetry.
For instance, there are the lyrics of the beautiful song “Belle ile en mer Marie Galante” by Laurent Voulzy.
( Ummm… before you read it, you have to know it’s my translation, and I don’t feel I’ve made a very great work… )
When this song is finished, you can explain it completely: the author compares his chidhood, in which he felt separated from his family, from others and from love by his color of skin, with islands, which are separated from earth by the ocean.
I don’t feel that english songs are contructed in the same way: they’re generally based upon strong images, (the context is not really described), and are often rather surrealistic. They suggest, but they don’t show. I don’t know very well english poetry but it seems to me that english songs don’t follow the same rules than english poetry.
So I wonder if this feeling is just the consequence of a lack of habit in practising english language, or if english people have the same feeling. And if this feeling about english lyrics is shared by other people.
I think your making a really sweeping statement about English lyrics. Certainly in England there are plenty of bands with songs that are tell stories, develop ideas and feeling. And there are plenty of bands with songs that are much more abstract and image based. Here is an example of a song called ‘Take your Carraige Clock and Shove it’ by one of my favourite ‘story telling’ bands, Belle and Sebastian:
Also, The Smiths are probably one of the most famous English bands to base their (well Morrissey’s) lyrics around stories, social observation, fictional events and so on.
Thank you for your replies and examples. I’m rather tired this night, and I couldn’t answer you, I’ll take more time to answer tomorrow.
I’ve read some lyrics by The Smiths (I just knew two or three songs before). The lyrics are strong and beautiful. I noticed in them the same tendency which I was telling about. Even if it describes a social situation, things are generally just suggested with the fewest possible details (like in old Chinese paintings).
(It’s perhaps due to the habit of seeing things through the fog? )
Sometimes, you cannot reconstruct the whole scene because some information is lacking. Am I comprehensible?
I’ll take some examples tomorrow.
Yeah I understand completely, but to be honest I’ve never really noticed it myself because i’m used to so many different styles of lyrics in the music I listen to, so I never thought that there might be a consistent difference between them and other lyrics in other languages. The differences you seem to be suggesting exist seem quite subtle to me, and maybe they do exist, i’m certainly no scholar on the matter, but if they do where you trying to make any other point, or just pointing out the difference?
I reckon though that if you could find the average song lyric in the UK or the US it would be a fairly poor effort at a love song, with frequent uses of the word baby. Because most pop songs are cheesy love songs, ghost written by corporate song writers. So it really depends in which area of music you look.
Here’s my favourite Smiths lyric, they do tend to be pretty miserable, just how I like it!
So, Surreal will understand I’m not talking about pop songs. I suppose that each country has its own pop songs made up with so many clichés and prefabricated phrases that it makes no more sense.
In the other hand, lyrics exist which are voluntarily strangely composed, for instance “Girls and boys” by Blur, in order to give a sort of nonsense effect. I really can’t imagine someone in France who could have sung “Never trust an man (with egg on his face)” by Adam and the Ants (perhaps the Rita Mitsuko? ).
I recognize it was a sweeting generalization when I said : english songs “are generally based upon strong images, (the context is not really described), and are often rather surrealistic.” I just wanted to point out that a style exists, which seems to be quite widely used; as I said, it describes a situation without really describing it, let some parts in the fuzziness, so you can’t precisely say who nor which the song is about.
Just take the case of the song “The empty world”. Could you really describe the girl? Is she sane or insane? Is she strong or is she weak? I suppose the “armies” are metaphoric, but what are they the metaphore of?
In the first example I gave (Moonlight Shadow) - IMO lyrics are not very good - does this song describe a well-known historical situation (very precise details like 6 shots, 105 people)? If not, it’s absolutely incomprehensible. Was the man a warrior, a policeman, a bandit, a rioter, a rebel? Why was his wife present when he was shot? The situation seems to have been created in an absolutely gratuitous way.
Is it due to my poor understanding of english language subtilities?
I pointed out the difference (if it exists) in order to clarify what I was talking about… but I obviously missed my goal! If this particularity (suggestion rather than description) of english songs exists, I was supposing it must find its source in english poetry, and I would have liked to know early examples of this tendency.
Ahh The Cure, Morrissey hated them (well Robert Smith), but I think they are a really good band.
As for your original point I can only comment on English lyrics, because I never read foreign language lyrics because I can’t, I only know a very little French and a few bits of German phrases. But I’ve always that there was a large variety of styles in the English lyrics I listen to, certainly there are bands who use a lot of metaphors and imagery in a more abstract way, and bands who write lyrics based on more realistic images and depictions of events. But if you think that French lyrics tend to use more precise images and descriptions then I’m sure you’re probably correct! Can’t help thinking though that images that are more poetic and far removed from reality are often very beautiful.
So I take it you are French then? Because your English is absolutley perfect, I really didn’t realise until this post and I have read a good many other posts by you! And I take it from your signiture that you are a fan of H.P. Lovecraft? Because I love what I have read of his, which is a lot of the short stories, but none of the novels yet. That CG picture of R’lyeh is fantastic, I really want to learn how to make similar pics with photoshop - is that what you use?
Thank you very much! I was thinking that my English was very poor and faulty, and I still have difficulties in expressing quite subtle thoughts, for instance in this thread.
I really love what he’s written, you can find in this thread https://community.ld4all.com/t/your-opinion-on-books/13218 my favorite short stories. Some of them are about 70 pages long. As far I know, Lovecraft has never written a novel, with the exception of a book we have in french, but which probably doesn’t exist in English! The editor has put together 4 short stories which were composed separately:
“The Statement of Randolph Carter” (1919)
“The Silver Key” (1929)
“Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1934)
“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” (1934)
and it gives a very good result! Moreover, IMO, this novel is very strongly related with lucid dreaming.
I would like to have done this picture, but it’s not mine. I’ve put it there just as an illustration of “my home” in R’lyeh.
It seems to have been done with a 3D renderer, so it’s not Photoshop. I’m using Photoshop from time to time, and I think that many effects in this picture cannot be (at least easily) rendered with it.
About our first subject, I realize that, although a lot of people are interested in lyrics, as we can deduce from the numerous lyrics sites, there are not arts studies about their style and characteristics indeed. I remember that my french teacher gave us once a song to be read, but it was just because it looks like classical poetry. The particular style and main characteristics of most of them generally go unnoticed…
I agree, and that’s why I was interested in this strange style, and hoped to get more information about this.
Just as a sidenote … i think that CG pic can be created in Opencanvas (similar to photoshop) fairly easily with a bit of work… just started to use it myself but its promising…
)
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I suppose that each country has its own pop songs made up with so many clichés and prefabricated phrases that it makes no more sense.
If this particularity (suggestion rather than description) of english songs exists, I was supposing it must find its source in english poetry, and I would have liked to know early examples of this tendency.
I was thinking that my English was very poor and faulty, and I still have difficulties in expressing quite subtle thoughts, for instance in this thread.
The editor has put together 4 short stories which were composed separately:
I’ve put it there just as an illustration of “my home” in R’lyeh. 
