One of the aspects of music I've noticed is that in many cases people pay little attention to the lyrics. Sometimes it's hard to make them out, especially if the music is overpowering. Sometimes they're actually hilarious if you try to just speak them aloud because they sound stupid. Sometimes they're awfully dreary and repetitive, even if you like the song, or pretty trite. So much of modern music is about romance, failed or otherwise, and there's not a lot original there. The Beach boys threw this for a loop with God Only Knows by starting a love sing with 'If you should ever leave me' but that's a rare thing.
I heard this one and was intrigued enough to look it up. It's a song from before I was born but the lyrics were really interesting. It's from a song called Nature Boy - which is a weird name for a song.
There was a boy
A very strange, enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far
Very far, over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he
And then one day
One magic day he passed my way
While we spoke of many things
Fools and Kings
This he said to me:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"
Springsteen is one of the better lyricists, if not one of the better singers. He's one of the best at creating songs that aren't just about romance, but about society around us. Like in My Hometown
In '65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come
To my hometown
Or My City in Ruins
Now the sweet bells of mercy
Drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner
Like scattered leaves
The boarded up windows
The empty streets
While my brother's down on his knees
My city of ruins
But he can do the relationship angst as well as the best, I think. As in Thunder Road
There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road
In the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on
When you get to the porch they're gone
On the wind
So Mary climb in
It's a town full of losers
And I'm pulling out of here to win
Home
Contact
Login
Register