The marriage of melody and message can be a powerful combination. When notes and words are joined, a hybrid form of communication results, and often this hybrid has greater impact than if either the words or the music were to be considered by themselves.
The single agent that binds John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller and Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice together and for all time is their mastery of the lyrical song hook.
If someone has contributed significantly to the discussion of art and modern culture through song lyrics, I’ve probably absorbed their influence. I have studied lyricists from Gilbert & Sullivan to Trent Reznor and assimilated practically every style of lyric written, from couplet and quatrain to iambic pentameter.
My influences are too numerous to list here, but some of my favorites are Bob Dylan; Lennon-McCartney; Jimi Hendrix; Ian Anderson; Leonard Cohen, David Byrne, Randy Newman, Johnny Cash; Bruce Springsteen; Neil Young; Hank Williams Sr; Leiber & Stoller; Simon & Garfunkel; Joni Mitchell; Kurt Cobain and Eminem.
Of course there are countless others.
Thirty-five years ago in high school English classes, it was de rigueur to examine and discuss Lennon-McCartney song lyrics along with those of Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Laura Nyro. But popular music offered a more centralized viewpoint then, was more a mouthpiece for an entire generation.
When protest music evolved during the nascent sixties, Bob Dylan almost single-handedly proved that it was possible to bite the hand that feeds. In anti-war songs like Masters Of War and Blowing In The Wind’ his Lyrics condemned not just genocide, but everything that was wrong with society. Dylan’s words & music showed the inherent cultural power of music, the power to challenge authority and the political powers-that-be.
From the days of Woodstock to the turn of the new century, a generation forged and expressed its collective identity through music and song lyrics.
But times, indeed, have changed.
The beginning of the 21st century has been marked by an increased reliance on technological convenience and digital multimedia communciation. Unfortunately, along with the loss of our collective innocence and attention spans went much of the study of song lyrics.
When one might miss something on the Satellite or the Cable TV or the VCR or the CD player or the DVD or the cellphone or the IPOD or the Playstation or the Worldwide Web, who’s got time to ponder the significance of song lyrics?
Staples of yesteryear such as Concept Albums and Rock Operas—examples of the lyrical art elevated—are practically unheard of in today’s bottom-line, we-don’t-have-the-budget, don’t-take-chances climate.
Thematic Albums which told stories, like Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick; David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust; The Who’s Quadrophenia; Pink Floyd’s The Wall; and Rush’s 2112; now seem like artifacts in a rock’n roll museum. Green Day’s excellent American Idiot is a recent exception.
“WORDS WITHOUT VOICES®” is not so much an attempt to preserve this method of modern pop cultural communication (the Concept Album) but an effort to explore it’s potential as a viable artform.
