La récep­tion nar­ra­tive des musiques rock et folk

Récep­tion con­tem­po­raine des artistes rock, folk et métal des années 1960–1980

Œuvre(s) : Cor­pus d’artistes anglo-sax­ons rock et folk act­ifs dans les années 1960, 70 et/ou 80 (Led Zep­pelin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Spring­steen, Neil Young, etc.).

Type de sources : Ques­tion­naires en ligne soumis à une approche quan­ti­ta­tive puis qual­i­ta­tive. Le pan­el est d’en­v­i­ron 500 per­son­nes (voir les pro­fils soci­ologiques dans la visu­al­i­sa­tion quantitative).

Pro­jet de recherche : La nar­ra­tivi­sa­tion des musiques pop­u­laires enreg­istrées : enjeux génériques et poli­tiques des musiques rock et folk (1962–1989). Thèse soutenue en 2022 : http://​hdl​.han​dle​.net/​2​0​.​5​0​0​.​1​1​7​9​4​/​73226

Chercheur.euse : Mar­i­on Bra­chet – Cotutelle EHESS et Uni­ver­sité Laval

Data­tion des sources : Ques­tion­naires dis­tribués sur la péri­ode 2019 — 2020.

Méthodolo­gie et pro­to­cole détail­lés : Disponibles en ligne

Travaux men­tion­nant ce dossier :

- M. Bra­chet, « ‘Like short movies in my head’ : les mon­des nar­rat­ifs dans les musiques pop­u­laires », Cahiers de nar­ra­tolo­gie 41, 2022. [lien]

- M. Bra­chet, « Enten­dre le réc­it dans les sons : une enquête auprès de publics rock et folk », Vol­ume !, 19/1, 181–194, 2022. [lien]

- M. Bra­chet, « ‘A trav­el­er of both time and space’ : les réc­its de Led Zep­pelin et leur récep­tion au sein d’une com­mu­nauté en ligne », dans Led Zep­pelin : con­texte, analyse, récep­tion, P. Gonin (dir.), Édi­tions Uni­ver­si­taires de Dijon, 2021.

Don­nées quantitatives

Don­nées qualitatives

De quel instrument jouez-vous ?
Gui­tar, irish bouzou­ki, flute
Key­boards, guitar
Voice
Gui­tar
Bass
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass, har­mon­i­ca and keyboards
Gui­tar
Gui­tar and bass
Gui­tar
Trom­bone ; dou­ble bass
Gui­tar, har­mon­i­ca, bas, piano and saxophone
Gui­tar
Piano, vox
Drums
Piano, har­mon­i­ca
Clar­inet
Bass gui­tar
Gui­tar
Key­boards and syn­the­siz­ers and relat­ed pro­gram­ming, gui­tars and relat­ed fret­ted stringed instru­ments, brass, drums, percussion
Drums
Gui­tar, bass, ban­jo, piano, harmonica
Drums
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass, kybds
Gui­tar, piano,
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass, drums, piano, vocals
Gui­tar har­mon­i­ca man­dolin banjo
Key­boards, gui­tar, flute
Drum set, gui­tar, man­dolin, ban­jo, piano
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass
Gui­tar
Gui­tar and harmonica
Piano
Gui­tar
Drums
Piano, gui­tar, bass
Gui­tar, drums, vocaks
Piano and key­boards, gui­tar, bass guitar.
Piano
Acoustic gui­tar, piano and harmonica
Piano, drums, keys, guitar
Gui­tar
Trum­pet, gui­tar, vocals
Sax­o­phone, piano, gui­tar, harmonica
Gui­tar, key­board, harmonica
Gui­tar, vocals, lit­tle lit­tle bit of piano
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass, key­boards, drums, vocals
Gui­tar
Piano/other key­boards, midi drums, ocarina
Bass, gui­tar
Djem­be, darabu­ka, mbira
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Vio­lin, gutiar, hamonica
Gui­tar, bass, drums, clarinet
Key­board
Gui­tar, piano
Piano, flute, guitar
Piano, gui­tar, harmonica
Bass gui­tar, drums, piano, flute, glock­en­spiel, guitar
Elec­tric gui­tar, acoustic guitar
Piano
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Drum, Trum­pet
Gui­tar, Voice, Keys
Gui­tar
Elec­tric guitar
Gui­tar, man­dolin, ukulele
Drums, gui­tar, and bass guitar
Piano, gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass, piano, drums, har­mon­i­ca, and mandolin.
Gui­tar, piano
Drums Bass
Gui­tar, bass, drums, trum­pet, banjo
Bass, Trum­pet, Recorder
Gui­tar and Bass
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, drums, vocals
Drums
Acoustic gui­tar
Gui­tar, piano, drums
Gui­tar
Trum­pet and cornet
Gui­tar
Drums
Piano, sax­o­phone, guitar
Piano/Organ/Synthesizer (noth­ing over­ly impres­sive). Plan­ning on pick­ing up gui­tar or bass at some point as well. (I would also include vocals if it counts as an instrument.)
Gui­tar, drums, piano, mandolin
French horn
Gui­tar, piano
Gui­tar, sax­o­phone, drums, bass
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Elec­tric and acoustic guitar
Gui­tar, Bass
Gui­tar
Drums and percussion
Drum set, Elec­tric Bass, and Violin
Gui­tar, piano and i used to play the saxophone
Syn­the­siz­er
Acoustic and Elec­tric guitar
Gui­tar, banjo
Gui­tar
I play the drums and the bass gui­tar, and am learn­ing how to play the guitar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, Trumpet
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Piano and guitar
Gui­tar, piano
Drums
Gui­tar
Gui­tar and ukulele
Drums, gui­tar, trumpet
Gui­tar
Gui­tar and ukulele
Drums
Drums
Cel­lo, Bass guitar
Keyboard/Piano
Gui­tar
Gui­tar and saxophone
Sax­o­phone
Piano
Alto sax­o­phone, Guitar
Gui­tar and Violin
Tin Whis­tle
Gui­tar, bass, drums, Har­mon­i­ca, mandolin
Gui­tar, Trum­pet, Piano, Bass, Voice
Vio­lin
Gui­tar
Acoustic Gui­tar, Keyboard
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, Trum­pet, Piano, Bass, Voice
Gui­tar, voice
Acoustic gui­tar
Gui­tar
Piano, gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass, drums, mandolin
Gui­tar, har­mon­i­ca, spoons, organ
Gui­tar, bass, piano, synths, vocals
Gui­tar, bass, piano
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass
Gui­tar, singing, mandolin.
Clar­inet, bari­tone sax­o­phone, sopra­no saxophone.
Gui­tar
Alto sax, flute (the­o­ret­i­cal), elec­tric bass (in the works), and I’m try­ing my best at the keys
Drums, gui­tar, keys
Gui­tar
Trum­pet
Gui­tar, bass, drums
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass, drums, piano, key­board, vio­lin, man­dolin, ban­jo, harmonica
Vio­lin
Key­board, vocals
Gui­tar
Guitar/Bass
Gui­tar, piano, bass, harmonica
Gui­tar
Piano and Keyboards
Gui­tar, bass, vocals, piano
Gui­tarr, Bas, Piano, Sax­o­phone, Harmonica
Gui­tar
Per­cus­sion, gui­tar, harmonica
Gui­tar, piano, vio­lin, ukulele, mandolin
Gui­tar, some Bass, Drums, Keys
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, Man­dolin, Piano
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, piano
Bass, keys, ther­im­in charango
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, bass,mandolin, bouzou­ki, harmonica
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, piano, French horn, sax­o­phone (any), clar­inet, flute, ukulele, tenor horn, flugel­horn, mellophone
Bass, gui­tar
Drums & var­i­ous per­cu­sion, Piano, and a tiny amount of guitar
Gui­tar, piano
Gui­tar piano drums
Gui­tar
Drums, voice
Trum­pet and piano
Gui­tar and Bass
Gui­tar
Gui­tar
Acoustic gui­tar, Elec­tric Gui­tar, harmonica
Flute
Gui­tar, piano, ukelele, tin whis­tle, accordion
Piano, vio­la, voice
Gui­tar bass ukulele
Gui­tar
Cel­lo
Gui­tar, Dul­cimer, Piano, Harmonica
Gui­tar bass drums piano harmonica
Ban­jo
Piano/keyboards, gui­tar, bass, drums
Gui­tar
Gui­tar, man­dolin, harmonica
Drums, bass, gui­tar, keyboards
Clar­inet, Piano
Gui­tar, bass, keyboards
Some basic piano and gui­tar (bad­ly); used to play the vio­lin, but stopped because of depres­sion (lack of ener­gy, lack of con­cen­tra­tion, anhe­do­nia, etc.) — would love to start again ; singing.
I sing ; play some basic gui­tar and piano (bad­ly); and I used to play the vio­lin, but depres­sion made it impos­si­ble to con­tin­ue (lack of ener­gy and moti­va­tion, dif­fi­cul­ties with focus/concentration, anhe­do­nia, etc.) — I would like to start again when I feel « up to it » however.

 

Quelles sont les chansons dont les paroles vous ont marqué ?
Bob Mar­ley-is this love : sim­ple and yet pow­er­ful. It shows an idea can be dis­tilled to it’s finest.  Queen — ’39 : great sci fi sto­ry in a folk set­ting. Sto­ry­telling is amaz­ing  Eagles — Hotel Cal­i­for­nia : Mys­tery, mys­ti­cism and at the end, despair. Once again, great storytelling
Eric Clap­ton’s Tears in Heaven
Watch­er of the Skies — haunt­ing, thought pro­vok­ing New Kid In Town — roman­tic, sad Sev­en Stones — epic story
As a teenag­er : Edda song :   « I stood on every cor­ner, I sat on every step, and when I kicked a peb­ble, I fol­lowed where it went »-loved the no care, many pos­si­bil­i­ties sug­gest­ed ; When heart­bro­ken lots of com­fort­ing lyrics
Song­bird stair­way to heav­en Dove sono ?
Truckin — Grate­ful Dead — explore the road and life is a long strange trip. I hate the white man — Roy Harp­er — the hav­oc we reap A man is in love — Water­boys — explains itself
Still in Love with you, loved it when I first heard it the music and the lyrics mean more to me now after 30 odd years of mar­riage than when I first heard it as a teenager
Roy Harp­er — Me And My Woman — full of romance and how a « rela­tion­ship » should be.
Com­fort­ably numb Pink Floyd Mas­ters of War Bob Dylan
« High­way­man » by Jim­my Webb, typ­i­cal of Webb I love his abil­i­ty to con­dense a long sto­ry into a sub 3 minute song. « Anoth­er Day » by Roy Harp­er, the immense emo­tion con­veyed, « Thun­der Road » by Bruce Spring­steen for it’s cin­e­mat­ic quality.
I remem­ber lis­ten­ing to Dylan’s 115th Dream on mag­ic mush­rooms and becom­ing part of that stream of con­scious­ness sto­ry !   Nico’s cov­er of One of These Day’s (Jack­son Browne) « please don’t con­front me with my fail­iours, I have not for­got­ten them… » floors me every time. A song about regret and wast­ing time. Feels deeply per­son­al.  Lyrics are the soul of the song. Dylan, Vel­vet Under­ground, S&G. Lyrics also locate YOU in a time or place. When­ev­er I lis­ten to REM I’m remind­ed of dri­ving across Amer­i­ca in 1990 with my friends.
« Don’t you think we’re for­ev­er » by Roy Harp­er because it’s a very sweet sen­ti­ment. « I want you » by Bob Dylan for its frank­ness and honesty
I hate the white man — Roy Harp­er a song about an unachiev­able, but huge­ly desir­able way of life which has been destroyed by West­en civilisation
Don mclean — Drei­del. Made me feel that life nev­er gets eas­i­er, it keeps on going and going. Tom Pet­ty — his music in gen­er­al­ly res­onates a lot with me. His mes­sages are clear. You have to take con­trol of your life
It’s Alright Ma(I’m Only Bleed­ing): Bob Dylan. Because of the poet­ic way that the lyrics are writ­ten, and they sound cool.  Tan­gled Up In Blue : Bob Dylan. Because of the way that the lyrics tell a sim­ple sto­ry and a inter­est­ing one at the same time.  Like A Rolling Stone : Bob Dylan. Because it’s a fuck you but in a more poet­ic sense.
To Live Is To Fly — The sim­ple wis­dom and hope­ful­ness from an oth­er­wise very tor­tured artist. Mississippi/Tangled Up In Blue — The way Dylan plays with time, place and per­spec­tive. « Cross The Green Moun­tain — Per­son­al reasons.
« Hal­lelu­jah » by Leonard Cohen — beau­ti­ful, emo­tion­al­ly evoca­tive lyrics drip­ping with prosody and inter­nal rhyme. « Dis­solve » by Jonathan Coul­ton for the same rea­sons. « The Last Pol­ka » by Ben Folds is just one exam­ple of his bril­liant sto­ry­telling in lyrics.   « Is Hap­pi­ness Just a Word » by Vin­nie Paz is a bril­liant descrip­tion of liv­ing with dissociation.
When I’m Gone by Phil Ochs, stopped my sui­ci­dal thoughts.
 « Until I Believe 8n My Soul » has all kinds of poignant lyrics about find­ing your inner strength and what you believe ; right in the mid­dle the singer says, spo­ken, « oh, you must be fuck­ing jok­ing ». Which is how I feel about a lot of hand-wavey « believe in your­self » type advice. It made me feel like these guys knew where I was com­ing from and helped me low­er my cyn­i­cism enough to engage with the rest of the song.  « Watche of the Skies » uses the metaphor « Maybe the lizard’s shred­ded its tail » to describe mankind ascend­ing beyond life on earth. Lizards shed their tails to escape some­thing hold­ing them back by the tail. It becomes more mul­ti­fac­eted when you fac­tor in the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age we are doing/have done — did we shed our tail or did the Earth rip it off ?
I once dat­ed a girl because of Mar­il­lion’s « Child­hood’s End » from their Mis­placed Child­hood album.  Not entire­ly but the lyrics « encour­aged » me to embrace some­thing from my teenage years,
Even Less by Por­cu­pine Tree, I heard at a time when I was­n’t sure where life was going so the idea of a poor per­son­’s short life being wast­ed or not res­onat­ed  No Han­dle­bars by Flobots, we are expe­ri­enc­ing it present­ly in the US  Sniper by Har­ry Chapin retells the Charles Whit­man Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas tow­er shoot­ing in a way that unin­ten­tion­al­ly fore­shad­ows « incel » school shoot­ings of today.
« Wond’ring Aloud Again » by Jethro Tull- the con­trast between the bit­ter­sweet, per­son­al, domes­tic lyrics of the first and last sec­tions, and the angri­er, oblique lyrics of the mid­dle sec­tion which deal with greater themes ; « Safe as Milk » by Cap­tain Beef­heart- the series of vivid, semi-con­nect­ed, con­crete images evoked by the lyrics ; « Lit­tle Neu­tri­no » by Klaatu- the way the lyrics poet­i­cal­ly devel­op the real-life exis­tence of neu­tri­nos, using their prop­er­ties (as demon­strat­ed by sci­ence) metaphor­i­cal­ly in a way linked to human emotions
Last Kiss pearl Jam- sad song lyri­cal­ly con­trast­ed by the up tem­po and bub­bly beat. You have to pay atten­tion to real­ize its sad as hell.   Cats in the cra­dle- song used to make me cry to no end as a kid. The ideas of a poor rela­tion­ship with a father has always had a soft spot to me.   Sup­pers Ready Gen­e­sis- well the whole song is just art­sy as hell and the final cli­nax con­tin­ues to send shiv­ers down my spine. Like­wise the wil­low­farm part is just so cool.
« Looked like there was 10, 000 peo­ple standin » round the buryin » ground / I did­n’t know I loved her ’til they laid her down » (Son House, « Death Let­ter Blues »)  A mil­lion songs con­vey the same sen­ti­ment of loss-inspired real­iza­tions (« you don’t miss your water till your well runs dry »), but this one hits me deeply and vis­cer­al­ly every time.  « When you hear me sin­gin » this old lone­some song, / you know these hard times can last us so long » (Skip James, « Hard Time Killing Floor Blues »)  An artist break­ing the fourth wall and speak­ing to his audi­ence, aware of the time­less­ness of the blues, and per­haps hope­ful that his song will be appre­ci­at­ed by future gen­er­a­tions who have to expe­ri­ence hard times of their own (since they’re time­less).  « If the ladies were black­birds, and if the ladies were thrush­es / I’d lie there for hours in the chilly cold marsh­es / If the ladies were squir­rels, with them high bushy tails / I’d fill up my shot­gun with rock, salt, and nails » (Steve Young, « Rock, Salt, and Nails »)  The change in per­spec­tive from love to hate is very pow­er­ful and speaks alle­gor­i­cal­ly to heart­break and the dis­avow­al of future relationships.
Yes — Own­er of a lone­ly heart — « own­er of a lone­ly heart, much bet­ter than the own­er of a bro­ken heart. » Bet­ter to be alone than hav­ing a bro­ken heart
Most­ly Sys­tem of a down songs mark me because of their polit­i­cal mes­sages and the imagery in their lyrics. Deer Dance from SOAD talks about exag­ger­at­ed police bru­tal­i­ty against pro­tes­tors. There is also Soil from the same band that talks about the loss of a close friend due to suicide.
Gen­e­sis — Car­pet Crawlers Played it while sleep­ing next to my just born first son  The Racon­teurs — Car­oli­na Dra­ma The lyrics just send chills down my spine every­time he sings :  « His mama reached behind the sug­ar and hon­ey, and Pulled out an enve­lope filled with mon­ey « Your dad­dy gave us this,  » she col­lapsed in tears « He’s been pay­ing all the bills for years »
Throw­ing it all away
The Smiths — Last Night I Dreamt That Some­body Loved Me (the feel­ing of despair and lone­li­ness spoke to me heav­i­ly)  The Rolling Stones — Far Away Eyes (a much lighter exam­ple, it made me laugh)
« But I’m not giv­ing in an inch to fear « Cause i’ve promised myself this year I feel oh, like I owe it, to some­one » I like this one because to me it means to stand by your con­vic­tions, it can send a pos­i­tive mes­sage to oth­ers that no mat­ter how or what you feel, right or wrong, you don’t con­form based on what oth­ers think.  It’s a social respon­si­bil­i­ty that you owe to your­self and oth­ers that you stand up for what you believe and don’t let the fear of what oth­ers may think of you rat­tle you for even a second.
Rush — Sub­di­vi­sons  This was the first song I heard that was about being the non-pop­u­lar kid liv­ing in the sub­urbs and it described my high school life almost per­fect­ly so I have an emo­tion­al attatch­ment to that song due to the lyrics.
No thanks
Stop This Train by John May­er. I have a fear of grow­ing old, los­ing youth and vital­i­ty. This song address­es that very well.  I Can’t Go On With­out You by Kaleo. A break up song that is strange­ly relat­able because of its vague­ness.   All Things Must Pass by George Har­ri­son. Very uplift­ing and relat­able in the sense of hav­ing hope that bad things will pass.
Amer­i­can pie and its rela­tion to the pro­gres­sion of Amer­i­ca Puff the mag­ic drag­on- A song about grow­ing up and leav­ing your child­ish past behind Hap­py Acci­dent- find­ing hap­pi­ness with­in mistakes
It’s Alright Ma — Dylan : So many sim­ple, con­cise but inge­nious lines. More quotable phras­es in one song than in most artists entire oeu­vre — « he not busy being born is busy dying ». This is the one song i imag­ine when i think of lyri­cal force — musi­cal­ly it’s almost bor­ing.  Not Fade Away — Writ­ten by Bud­dy Hol­ly but made more famil­iar to me through The Rolling Stones. The one line here — « Well love is love and not fade away », says it all really.
She’s Your Lover Now by Bob Dylan — the lyrics of a girl leav­ing a guy for some­one else res­onat­ed with me It’s Alright Ma : « It is not he or she or them or it that you belong to » — reminds me to be independent
Bak­er St. Muse by Jethro Tull : It’s, to me, about the strug­gles of push­ing through life’s hard­ships and dis­as­ters by cre­at­ing art, and find­ing the pow­er to trans­form the things you have seen and heard into some­thing larg­er than your­self.  Sup­per’s Ready by Gen­e­sis : A song of such strange and won­drous adven­ture, fan­ta­sy, humor, ter­ror and love, there’s a bit of every­thing in there and it’s word­play and lyri­cal allu­sions are tight­ly woven and per­fect­ly deliv­ered.   Spi­ral Of Ants by Lemon Demon : A strange­ly upbeat-yet-melan­choly song, the lyrics make par­al­lels between an ant death mill and human soci­ety and cap­i­tal­ism, talk­ing about how belief in sys­tems gives them their pow­er and makes them real, even if those sys­tems then oppress and beat down upon the peo­ple with­in them and the world at large.
As with com­fort­ably numb, he hit at a time when I was young and feel­ing low and it described my dis­con­nect with the world
The Seek­er by The Who. It real­ly res­onat­ed with my search for answers in life.  Also, Sweet Home Alaba­ma is my favourite feel­go­od song.
I’d like to refer to some of the songs I wrote down in the « favorite songs » sec­tion. The lyrics to those songs were a part of why they touched my soul, so to speak. With­in You With­out You — Bea­t­les : « Try to real­ize it’s all with­in your­self, no-one else can make you change. And to see you’re real­ly only very small, and life flows on with­in you and with­out you. »  Heroes — David Bowie : « We can be heroes just for one day, we can be us just for one day. »  And You And I — Yes : « Com­ing quick­ly to terms of all expres­sion laid, As a moment regained and regard­ed both the same, Emo­tion revealed as the ocean maid, A clear­er future, morn­ing, evening, nights with you. »  Sor­ry for the lengthy input.
I usu­al­ly notice when a lyric evokes a pow­er­ful image or con­veys a pow­er­ful emo­tion. From my favorite songs  « I’m going out of my mind, oh With a pain that stops and starts Like a corkscrew to my heart Ever since we’ve been apart » — Big Girl now  « And Madon­na, she still has not showed We see this emp­ty cage now cor­rode Where her cape of the stage once had flowed The fid­dler, he now steps to the road He writes ev’ry­thing’s been returned which was owed On the back of the fish truck that loads While my con­science explodes » — Visions
Lit­er­al­ly, this song is called « You Will Leave a Mark. »  You Will Leave A Mark A Silent Film I am so ashamed, I am so ashamed of all the trou­ble I have caused I am so ashamed of all these un-opened doors I am so ashamed of what I have become. Oh, my heart is burst­ing again Don’t leave this mark Your eyes are turn­ing away I am of the west, I am fair skinned I deserve a bul­let in my chest If I have no reli­gion i’ve no rea­son to be scared I am going to hell but I just don’t care.
Like A Rolling Stone lyrics res­onat­ed with my sit­u­a­tion at the time and changed my gen­er­al behav­iour and attitude.
Rush — Los­ing It We’ve all been there : down and out, with no hope. Hold­ing on to what­ev­er we have left. Heart wrench­ing every time I hear it.  Gen­e­sis — No Son of Mine Pater­nal con­flict is some­thing i’ve had to deal with my whole life, so they hit me right at home.  Marc Cohn — Walk­ing in Mem­phis Per­fect­ly cap­tures the spir­it of dis­cov­er­ing a city. Walk­ing through the streets, admir­ing all the things around you. It’s some­thing i’ve felt many times while trav­el­ing, so the con­nec­tion is real­ly strong.
Much of Good Kid MAAD City gave me a per­spec­tive I nev­er had. Cats in the Cra­dle was pret­ty wild to hear as a kid since it was also from a per­spec­tive I nev­er real­ly thought about.
Des­o­la­tion row, visions of johan­na by dylan.  They showed pop­u­lar music as an impres­sion­ist lit­er­ary form.  Cal­cu­lat­ed an con­sid­ered in a way that is more than just emo­tion or energy.
Rip­ple by The Grate­ful Dead due to its mes­sage of liv­ing a life of sim­plic­i­ty and gratitude
Bob Dylan’s « Tan­gled up in blue » : every one of them words rang true And glowed like burn­ing coal Pour­ing off of every page Like it was writ­ten in my soul From me to you
Danc­ing With The Moon­lit Knight is a beau­ti­ful song by Gen­e­sis, and its lyrics are about how the UK has fall­en from its for­mer glo­ry, and how increas­ing­ly cor­po­rate and cap­i­tal­is­tic it has become. It’s filled with clever word­play, and it real­ly left an impact on me. Then of course there’s Who Dun­nit, by the same band.  It depicts a dire sit­u­a­tion for the nar­ra­tor, clear­ly des­per­ate to fig­ure­cout who did it. You real­ly feel his strug­gle as you lis­ten to him ques­tion if it was you, or me, or even he or she. Tru­ly a mas­ter­piece of lyri­cal design.
North Coun­try — we have all had rela­tion­ships like this Wat­ford Gap — hav­ing vis­it­ed most ser­vice sta­tions — this one is no dif­fer­ent for the others
Hurt by john­ny cash…powerful I don’t wan­na know about evil by john mar­tyn me and my woman & com­mune by roy harper…both so poetical
Visions of Johan­na : Enig­mat­ic yet clear, showed me a dif­fer­ent way of per­ceiv­ing and under­stand­ing lyrics.  Sub­ter­re­an Home­sick Blues : Con­cise depic­tions of every­day mis­ery and harsh truths
Visions of Johan­na- beau­ti­ful and abstract  Stuck inside if mobile — made me real­ize great lyrics don’t have to be seri­ous or pre­ten­tious.   Astral weeks — dreamlike
Songs that made me cry because of per­son­al reasons
Girl From The North Coun­try per­fect­ly encap­su­lat­ed my feel­ings towards a girl I had recent­ly end­ed a rela­tion­ship with. The song helped me cope and helped me get into Dylan.
The end­ing of Sup­per’s Ready, where it appears the main char­ac­ter has passed away and is now in the after life.  The entire­ty of Close To The Edge is a beau­ti­ful song that I think is about death  Sea­son will pass you by, now that it’s all over and done, now that you find, now that you’re whole.   Echoes by Pink Floyd — Cloud­less every­day you fall upon my wak­ing eyes, exit­ing and invit­ing me to rise. Beau­ti­ful lyrics I wish some­one said to me.
I don’t know any exam­ples right now, but I know it’s true.
Tom Waits-Any­where I Lay my Head — « I don’t need any­body, because I learned to be alone »  Grate­ful Dead-Uncle John’s Band-« All I want to know is, are you kind ? »  Bob Mar­ley-Get up stand up-« You can fool some peo­ple some of the time, but you can’t fool all the peo­ple all the time »
Cac­tus tree/marcie by joni mitchell describe (among oth­er things) the life of some­one who did­n’t devel­op a sus­tain­able way of liv­ing and reach­ing goals. When­ev­er i « feel » the song, i’m remind­ed to focus on what is impor­tant to me.  The image of love in the automn stone by the small faces appeals to me. Just know­ing intu­itive­ly that you belong, the peace­ful­ness, the appre­ci­a­tion.  Don mclean’s vin­cent reminds me that notic­ing and appre­ci­at­ing the beau­ty in life is not entire­ly weird — and encour­ages me to do it more often 🙂
Motör­head — (Don’t Let « Em) Grind Ya Down Bob Dylan — Mas­ters of War The Bea­t­les — Straw­ber­ry Fields Forever
The way  the swedish song­writer Joakim Berg (of Kent fame) con­structs lyrics that car­ry on through the whole album so that lyri­cal bridges from i.e. The sec­ond song may res­onate with the final song etc. The way Joan­na New­som inter­twines her per­son­al expe­ri­ences with old folk­lore and his­tor­i­cal references.
Gen­e­sis : Dri­ving the Last Spike About the work­ers who laid the rail­roads across the UK in the 19th cen­tu­ry, and the haz­ards of the work. My mater­nal great grand­fa­ther did the same in Swe­den and broke his leg in an accident.
1. Sounds Of Silence — Simon And Gar­funkel A song that neat­ly encap­su­lates the angst, fore­bod­ing, and iso­la­tion of human­i­ty in 20th cen­tu­ry moder­ni­ty, where the soul is being lost amongst the mud­dy waters of mate­r­i­al pro­gres­sion.  2. Mcgoohan’s Blues — Roy Harp­er A phe­nom­e­nal stream of con­scious­ness that, in true folk tra­di­tion, serves as first-hand wit­ness to injus­tice.  3. Still Life — Peter Ham­mill A hair-rais­ing insight into a night­mare future dystopia, from the deep and vision­ary mind of per­haps music’s great­est lyri­cal genius of all.  4. Epi­taph — King Crim­son High­ly evoca­tive of the holo­caust angst of the Cold War, and the psy­che’s dread of anni­hi­la­tion.  5. Siso­tow­bell Lane — Joni Mitchell Joni has a great gift to paint a vivid pic­ture with just a few well-cho­sen and elo­quent words. Here is a charm­ing and lov­ing land­scape of an untrou­bled rur­al back­wa­ter, away from the cares of the world.
Time by pink Floyd. Epi­taph by king crim­son. The end by the doors. These songs all have lyrics that are sur­re­al and I can relate to them, or have very inter­est­ing sto­ry­telling elements.
Queens of the Stone Age lyrics speak of heart­break and dev­as­ta­tion (see Vampyre of Time and Mem­o­ry)  John­ny Cash’s cov­er of Hurt made me feel for his pain.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road your on. — Led Zep­pelin, Stair­way To Heav­en. This lyric always comes to me when Im try­ing to make a deci­sion that can impact my life neg­a­tive­ly or pos­i­tive­ly.  Are you scared to death to live ? ‑Green Day, Still Breath­ing. Per­son­al­ly i’ve have, and still am at times ‚afraid of liv­ing, afraid of what the future holds. So when I first heard this lyric, it real­ly impact­ed me hard.  How can you stay when heart says no ? How can you stop when your feet say go?- Elton John, Honky Cat. At a time where I want to go and do more with my life, I still feel stuck at where i’am cause I feel I have no choice but to stay, but I want to go.
Isn’t it a pity-George Har­ri­son Neon Grave­stones-Twen­ty one Pilots  Time-Pink Floyd
I Bet on Los­ing Dogs — Mit­s­ki (remind­ed me of a friend who did not care about me, yet I con­tin­ued to be sup­port­ive and care about the out­come of the friendship)
Drug Use Sobri­ety Love
I love the song love it if we made it par­tial­ly because of its lyrics. It talks about the hor­rors of the mod­ern world and the fail­ing of our lead­er­ship to address huge prob­lems like cli­mate change.  I loved the Led Zep­pelin song That’s the Way, for the way it speaks about racism/classism. I thought that was very poignant.  I also love the song Belief by John May­er, which talks about every­one’s devo­tion to their own beliefs rather than an effect to work togeth­er. Very mean­ing­ful to me as a recent ex-christian
Stair­way To Heav­en : This song has made me rethink my approach to song writ­ing.  Jumpin » Jack Flash : It reminds that even though bad things may hap­pen, they will get better.
Then, as it was. Then again it will be. Though the course may change some­times rivers always reach the sea  Love isn’t greed it’s a need that goes unspo­ken. Love does­n’t leave when you fade away. Pain isn’t vain if it means your hearts been bro­ken. Pain is the same as a means to heal
« If the sun refused to shine, i would still be lov­ing you. If moun­tains crum­bled to the sea, there would still be you and me. » ‑Led Zep­pelin, « Thank you »
Moth­er by Flo­rence and the Machine, pow­er­ful song about escape and nature Mur­der of the Uni­verse by King Giz­zard and the Lizard Wiz­ard, a song about a cyborg vom­it­ing so much that it destroys the uni­verse. Some of the most vivid imagery I have ever heard in music.
What it’s like Imagine
Most Fleet­wood Mac songs that have mean­ing can make an impact on me.
Time — Showed how we waste our time and how we have to make the most of what we have  Stair­way to Heav­en — Showed the human need for redemp­tion and self ful­fill­ment and the dream for a bet­ter future.
Song of the siren–  this song total­ly encap­su­lat­ed how I felt about my wife on our wed­ding day.  We were both old­er, nev­er mar­ried, and torn down by life.   Rest Stop–  just reminds me of my m life from age 19–24 and feel­ing extreme­ly lone­ly and hurt after my high-school sweet­heart broke up with me.
Not a song, but dark side of the moon has always impressed me on how each songs man­ages to tell a sto­ry about a per­son­’s expe­ri­ences through life.
Led Zep­pelin’s Thank You. It’s a song is peace and tran­quil­i­ty Babymet­al’s No Rain, No Rain­bow. An extreme­ly pow­er­ful met­al Bal­lard. In Japan­ese, but there is very strong emo­tion when I found the trans­lat­ed lyrics
Stair­way to Heaven
Local H have a song called « Lead Pipe Cinch » and it’s lyrics reached me on a deeply per­son­al lev­el, giv­ing me insight on how my pro­cess­ing works some­times : « Some­thing in my mind won’t let my heart and head and mouth connect/And some­thing in my mind won’t let my heart out of the dark­ness yet. » It’s a song, sure, but a lot of times I feel as if I’m able to con­nect ideas about myself togeth­er through songs writ­ten by oth­er peo­ple.  Anoth­er song called « Addict­ed ! » by the Devin Townsend Project reach­es me in a very pos­i­tive way. The cho­rus is soar­ing, dam­aged, in pain yet tri­umphant in its resilience before growl­ing in dec­la­ra­tion « let’s be like the moun­tains — OM. » Dur­ing times its dif­fi­cult to move for­ward, it helps to have an advo­cate, even if it is via music.  Final­ly, Mark Oliv­er Everett’s project Eels has time and again giv­en me much to think about. The entire album Elec­tro-Shock Blues was illu­mi­nat­ing for me dur­ing my father’s bat­tle with can­cer. Songs like « Dead of Win­ter » or « Climb­ing To The Moon » cra­dled me until I fell asleep often enough. Lyric : « I won’t be denied this time before I go out of my mind over mat­ters, got my foot on the lad­der and I’m climbin » up to the moon. »
Most­ly just makes me research what its about.
Bob Dylan — All along the watch­tow­er (Inte­gra­tion of arche­types and mythol­o­gy)  Leonard Cohen — Suzanne (Poet­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of love)  Ken­ny Rogers — The Gam­bler (Mas­ter­ful and wit­ty storytelling)
Sweat­ing Bul­lets — Megadeth — Made me stop being a sad boi emo Alti­tudes — Jason Beck­er — Made me work hard­er to learn gui­tar La Vil­la Stran­gia­to — Rush — Also made me work hard­er to learn just music in general
We live no more- Black Label Soci­ety I real­ly con­nect with the lyrics of the song, and think that it is a good phi­los­o­phy to live by.
Stair­way To Heav­en because it devel­ops a sto­ry with­out telling you directly.
Rip­ple.  I find it com­fort­ing­ly spir­i­tu­al.  I’d like it to be played at my memo­r­i­al ser­vice after I die
Robert Hunter has wrote many awe inspir­ing lyrics with the Grate­ful Dead such as rip­ple and ter­rapin sta­tion. Led Zep­pelin 3 had great lyrics espe­cial­ly in the acoustic tracks. I think Paul mccart­ney has wrote incred­i­ble songs both with the Bea­t­les and with Wings
There is a song called « Should’ves and Could’ves » by Phil and the Oso­phers. One of the lyrics in the song asks a ques­tion that has effect­ed the way I live my life. It asks, « what are you going to do when your should’ves and your could’ves go catch­ing up to you ? » This is a much need­ed push that I often times need in order to take risks and step out of my com­fort zone.  Anoth­er exam­ple would be « Time » by Pink Floyd. The lyrics in that song talk about time and how fleet­ing it is. The lyrics real­ly hit home say­ing, « And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the start­ing gun. » This song has effect­ed the way that I live life, caus­ing me to want to expe­ri­ence all that life has to offer and not waste my days doing nothing.
When the Lev­ee Breaks — Pret­ty much all songs like this, the lyrics are impor­tant to con­vey a Loth of the feeling
Opi­ate- Tool : Shares my thoughts on reli­gion   War Pigs- Black Sab­bath : The best exam­ple of an anti-war song  Cal­i­for­nia über Alles- Dead Kennedys : Bril­liant satire and politics
1.« Our Shad­ows Taller than our soul There walks a lady we all know Who shines white light and wants to show »- stair­way to heav­en : Real­ly beau­ti­ful lyrics, I feel like its the truth that impacts every­one at a spir­i­tu­al lev­el. 2.« Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut ? Jesus Christ, deny your mak­er He who tries, will be wast­ed Feed my eyes now you’ve sewn them shut »- Man in the box, pret­ty relat­ed to the con­text of the song that is,Government  Cen­sor­ship, thos that try to against will be dec­i­mat­ed, no one has a an actu­al say. 3. « When you know that your time is close at hand Maybe then you’ll begin to under­stand Life down here is just a strange illu­sion »- Hal­lowed Be thy Name : When you are actu­al­ly bound to die, it is then that you real­ize how all this time you had been pay­ing atten­tion to mate­ri­al­is­tic and unim­por­tant things than liv­ing an actu­al life, the nor­mal life humans tend to live is noth­ing but an illusion.
« There’s a feel­ing I get when I look to the west And my spir­it is cry­ing for leav­ing In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees And the voic­es of those who stand look­ing » — look­ing for some sort of paradise
Some­thing- George Har­ri­son This is prob­a­bly a com­mon exam­ple, but I think every­one can res­onate with the over­whelm­ing feel­ings of new love and uncer­tain­ty pre­sent­ed therein.
John­ny Cash’s cov­er of Hurt. The orig­i­nal by NIN is great, but the emo­tion, the frailty of his voice. It res­onat­ed with me deeply and even more so after the loss of my Dad as he was a huge fan of John­ny Cash. It was/is only the few songs that have  made me cry.
Stair­ways abstract lyrics, that they can be inter­pret­ed to mean almost any­thing, melis­sas lyrics give me imagery of sum­mer time road trips and trav­el­ing, and that smell I relate to because I know peo­ple who can been affect­ed by drugs
Hur­ri­cane by Bob Dylan is very mov­ing due to its polit­i­cal con­text. I find Amer­i­ca by Simon and Gar­funkel par­tic­u­lar­ly nos­tal­gic too, even for a time I nev­er experienced.
Led Zep­pelin specif­i­cal­ly has a con­formed note that is pret­ty empow­er­ing. The way that the drums com­pli­ment the gui­tar flaw­less­ly but all while adding key­board and plants voice real­ly make it some­thing spe­cial. Gives you an ener­gized feel­ing and makes you scream. Spon­tane­ity forms.
1. From Goji­ras song « eso­teric surgery » : « You have the pow­er to heal your­self ». Sticks with me as I was going through a tough time when I used to lis­ten to Goji­ra   2. Anoth­er one from Goji­ra, « Thy ser­pent made of bones » from the song « back­bone ». Have mem­o­ries of lis­ten­ing to this with my ex girl­friend and almost get­ting this phrase tat­tooed on my hand.   3. « No I don’t have a gun » from come as you are by Kurt Cobain. Very very iron­ic lyric that to this day makes me pon­der upon what real­ly affect­ed a Kurt Cobain so badly.
The Cir­cle game- Joni Mitchell  I real­ly love the metaphor of a carousel being life. This lyric I love because it’s true and it make you think about how you can’t go back in time, you can only think about it.  » We can’t return we can only look behind From where we came »  Also this lyric,  » Take your time, it won’t be long now. Till you drag your feet to slow the cir­cles down » res­onates with me because peo­ple tell me that all the time because I’m a teenag­er. Again it makes me think about life and how fast it can move.  For many of the same rea­sons, Time by Pink Floyd vibes with me. This lyric, « You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the start­ing gun » has the same feel as the Cir­cle Game. Make you think about how fast life moves, and it kind of freaks me out, because I am liv­ing in the time that i’ll look back on and say « it went by so quick­ly. » Kind to spooky.
Autumn Almanac, The Kinks.  Beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered view of quaint British life.  Ear­ly Morn­ing Blues and Greens, The Mon­kees.  Beau­ti­ful descrip­tion of morn­ing.  Dis­ney Girls (1957), The Beach Boys.  Beau­ti­ful song about what I con­sid­er to be the per­fect life.
-Small Town by John Mel­len­camp : The entire song per­fect­ly rep­re­sents what i’ve known all my life grow­ing up in a small, mid­west­ern town. I love my life, that song, and how they feel like one thing. ‑Dont think twice by Bob Dylan : This somg always touch­es me after any breakups I expe­ri­ence. The line « but don’t think twice, it’s alright » is often how I feel towards the oth­er per­son, as I’m not mad, and jusy want to move on.
Hard rains gonna fall — Bob Dylan. I love the imagery he uses and the style  Fen­tanyl — black thought. A mes­sage we all need to hear
Moth­er, God (Lennon), most­ly in the deliv­ery Across the Uni­verse, more in the words them­selves I Am The Wal­rus, uncon­ven­tion­al (I know these are all Lennon but I real­ly don’t pay atten­tion to lyrics usu­al­ly, his are the only ones I real­ly focus on)
Wish you were here. The sec­ond verse is fuck­ing amazing
« I see a woman in the night/ With a baby in her hand/ Under an old street lamp/ Near a garbage can/ Now she puts the kid away, and she’s gone to get a hit/ She hates her life and what she’s done to it/ There’s one more kid that will nev­er go to school/ Nev­er get to fall in love, nev­er get to be cool » in the song « Rockin » in the Free World » by Neil Young has real­ly affect­ed me. It makes me think about how the free world can be lib­er­at­ing or destruc­tive, depend­ing on how you use it. Your life can be great and ful­fill­ing or destruc­tive, like this wom­an’s, or maybe you don’t even get a chance, like this baby. It makes you trea­sure the expe­ri­ences you have, and make the most out of life. All the lyrics, and the whole song, of « Let It Be » has helped me out when I was­n’t doing so great. This song has helped to calm me down when I’m real­ly stressed or going through a rough time. If I did some­thing wrong ear­li­er in the day, said some­thing I prob­a­bly should­n’t have or messed up an assign­ment, lis­ten­ing to « Let It Be » helps me let those moments go and stop think­ing about them.
For exam­ple the line « Yes, there are two paths you can go by But in the long run There’s still time to change the road you’re on » from stair­way to heav­en has left a huge impact on me, it gives me a sense of hope in a way that the small things in life don’t mat­ter that much
Kash­mir, Stair­way to Heav­en, In My Time Of Dying
Ten years gone- and though cours­es may change some­times, rivers always reach the sea.   I guess i’ve always seen it as a nice reminder that no mat­ter what you are going through, as long as you keep push­ing through and mov­ing for­wards you’ll get were you want to get to
I Hung my Head by John­ny Cash, it’s a mur­der bal­lad and the i always thought the sto­ry was pret­ty haunting
Can You Get to That — Funkadel­ic « When you base your love on cred­it And your lov­ing days are done Checks you signed with a‑love and kiss­es Lat­er come back signed « insuf­fi­cient funds«  «   Its a real­ly ele­gant metaphor for how love is to be some­thing to be shared, not exchanged, and treat­ing it as comes back around.  Going to Cal­i­for­nia — Led Zep­pelin « Stand­ing on a hill in my moun­tain of dreams Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems »  The imagery of fac­ing the mas­sive chal­lenges to accom­plish what you set out to do is daunt­ing for every­one, and that lit­tle bit of self-assur­ance, regard­less of its truth­ful­ness, is critical.
The Rain Song — Led Zep­pelin. These lyrics feel very com­fort­ing and when I lis­ten to this song, it feels like home. Not only because of the lush musi­cal com­po­si­tion, but also because of the warm world described by the lyrics. There are times when I walk around out­side and the beau­ty of nature makes me think of the Rain Song lyrics.   In The Aero­plane Over The Sea — Neu­tral Milk Hote — The lyrics in this song describe some­one’s beau­ty, and many times when I look at my part­ner I am struck by their beau­ty. The first time I heard this song I felt like the song was describ­ing my part­ner, and the lyrics seem to describe the won­ders of being alive on the Earth.
« I can admit, i’ve been depressed, I hit a wall. Ouch. » As some­one who strug­gles with depres­sion hearing/seeing some­one you look up to speak open­ly about their own strug­gles is a weight of your shoul­ders. It shows you you’re not alone and that nobody is above need­ing a hand every now and then.
I real­ly like the song Friends by Led Zep­pelin espe­cial­ly for the lyric « you got love, you ain’t lone­ly ». When­ev­er I lis­ten to it I am remind­ed that I can reach out to peo­ple when I am in a bad place which is real­ly hard for me to do.
Codex — Radio­head : « The water’s clear and inno­cent ». In con­text of the song, the lyrics are extreme­ly pow­er­ful.  Stay Away — Nir­vana : « Rather be dead than cool ». These lyrics were reas­sur­ing to me. After lis­ten­ing to Nev­er­mind, Nir­vana’s sopho­more album, all I could think of the next morn­ing were those lyrics.  Unti­tled — Inter­pol : « Sur­prise, some­times, will come around ». These lyrics in my opin­ion sound a bit bleak, like the nar­ra­tor is going to do some­thing to them­selves that will sur­prise those around them.
One good exam­ple for me is def­i­nite­ly Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp. It taught me that the emo­tions that can be felt from expe­ri­ences don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be sig­nif­i­cant ones, such as Plant talk­ing about his dog.
In Going to Cal­i­for­nia « Try­ing to find a woman who’s nev­er been born » spoke to me as we (or at least me) often search for ide­al­ized ver­sions of things, peo­ple, rela­tion­ships, that may not exist.
In the Light — Led Zep­pelin : Has got­ten me through many, many tough times in life  Sim­ple Man — Lynyrd Skynyrd : Lis­ten to it when­ev­er I need to ground myself and remem­ber who I am
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleed­ing) — Bob Dylan  I just love the sheer poet­ic qual­i­ty of the lyrics. It’s Dylan at his lyri­cal best and one of those songs where the words could just be read out and lose none of their power.
The child is grown, the dream is gone and I have become Com­fort­ably Numb.
Like A Stone by Audioslave real­ly hit home for me, I was going through a rough patch in life and it helped me come to accept cer­tain things about life and become an adult.
Last Good­bye by Jeff Buck­ley. It was a time in my life where I was break­ing up with a guy I liked and the lyrics real­ly spoke to me. Ever­glow by Cold­play. It makes me think of my grand moth­er who died.
1. Rain Song — LZ — sooth­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment with relat­able lyrics (« upon us all a lit­tle rain must fall). 2. I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You — Tom Waits — The descrip­tion of meet­ing at ran­dom and the thoughts/feelings/tension between peo­ple as they meet (or don’t) and the sto­ry you can cre­ate for your­self about a par­tic­u­lar set of cir­cum­stances. Again, relat­able situations/lyrics — being a fool for love. 3. Thank You — LZ — A beau­ti­ful lyric of love and when played live (see BBC Ses­sions) gives col­or and soft­ness to the mass of sound sur­round­ing it from Bonham/Page/JPJ.
Fuel Up by Stornoway. I dis­cov­ered their first album at the end of my col­lege years and the lyrics just synced up per­fect­ly with how I felt in my life at that moment. Even though it’s essen­tial­ly about com­ing back to a famil­iar place it still just hit home.
Last Good­bye (Jeff Buck­ley) because i was break­ing up with a guy who I real­ly liked, and I felt like the lyrics were writ­ten for me. Ever­glow (Cold­play) because it makes me think of my deceased grand mother
Pride and Joy — Fell in love with this song in the 80s. Fell in love with a girl in 2000 and when we got mar­ried, that song was our first fun dance. Beau­ti­ful song to sing and tap your foot in rhythm, but hard as hell to dance to, much like our mar­riage, which end­ed in 2019.
Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond pt 1–6 « Come on you raver, you seer of visions Come on you painter, you piper, you pris­on­er, and shine » This part of the song is kin­da a descrip­tion of Syd and what he’s like
« Open up, let it be known, when the going gets tough, you’re not alone » An opti­mistic view for my indi­vid­ual strug­gles.   « Still naive, under achieved, filled with rage I can’t embrace » The con­fu­sion and uncer­tain­ty of being a teenag­er. Don’t know how to think, or what to do. Get­ting angry at things I can’t ver­bal­ize.  « Wait­ing for the ide­al dream to come along and please my needs. A lifestyle lenient enough to car­ry out my unplanned strat­e­gy » every­one has dreams but nobody chas­es them. They wait for the dream to come to them
Going to Cal­i­for­nia is the first song I ever remem­ber hear­ing at a very young age. The lyrics bring nos­tal­gia and happiness
Sym­pa­thy for the dev­il lyrics are very intel­li­gent, based in his­to­ry and align per­fect­ly with the rhythm of the song Tan­gled up in blue has incred­i­ble rhyming and rhythm — and an out­stand­ing sto­ry Amer­i­can idiot is one of the bet­ter exam­ples of a lin­ear sto­ry across mul­ti­ple songs
Time by Pink Floyd- reflec­tive on time and how brief every­thing is  Over The Hills and Far­away by Led Zep­pelin- every­one is the same really
Yes­ter­day by the Bea­t­les. « Yes­ter­day all my trou­bles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay » Right now, I am in the mid­dle of col­lege applications/acceptances so I have been stressed out. While these lyrics are some­what sad, it made me feel hap­py because I could con­nect with the lyrics because of sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. I also nev­er lis­ten to sad songs, and this is sort of my first one. This is prob­a­bly the last sad song i’ll lis­ten to because I don’t like feel­ing sad. Bron Y Aur Stomp- « Well if the sun­shine’s so bright, Or on our way it’s dark­est night The road we choose is always right, so fine » The song is about the singer’s dog, which reminds me of my dog. These lyrics make me real­ize how strong my con­nec­tion is with my dog.  I enjoy these lyrics so much because it implies a strong bond.
Dogs — Pink Floyd : « Who was born in a house full of pain Who was trained not to spit in the fan Who was told what to do by the man Who was bro­ken by trained per­son­nel » Epit­o­mis­es feel­ings of social dis­il­lu­sion­ment  Behind Blue Eyes — The Who : « No one knows what it’s like To be hat­ed To be fat­ed To telling only lies » Sym­pa­thy for the vil­lian  Vin­cent — Don mclean : « Now I under­stand What you tried to say to me And how you suf­fered for your san­i­ty And how you tried to set them free They would not lis­ten, they did not know how » The mis­un­der­stood artist
Brown eyed girl reminds me of my wife. Mr. Brown­stone made me real­ize where I was going to end up if  I did­n’t change my life, Kings and Queens made me go to Hati to help build orphanages.
« Some peo­ple get their kicks, stomp­ing on a dream » « I did it my way »
« Yes, there are two paths you can go by But in the long run There’s still time to change the road you’re on »  These lyrics make me think about how it is nev­er to late to make change in my life even if I thought I could­n’t or it was too late.
Ten Years Gone — poet­ic, bit­ter­sweet lyrics rem­i­nisc­ing about a love lost as well as fate ; Time (or any­thing from DSOTM) — about the uni­ver­sal con­cept of time, and how it slips by until it’s too late.
The end­ing of Black by Pearl Jam is quite emo­tion­al, ques­tion­ing love
Bron y Aur stomp- My dog had just passed at the time I dis­cov­ered this song. When I heard the song I under­stood it was talk­ing about his dog and it remind­ed me of my dog and how much love there is between the bond That’s the way- It is talk­ing about how there are peo­ple who dwell on the past and you should not mod­el your­self after and you should live your life the way you tru­ly want to be
« These Are Days, » 10,000 Mani­acs (pos­i­tive themes helped me dur­ing rather depressed time) « Fight the Pow­er, » Pub­lic Ene­my (force­ful dec­la­ra­tion of cul­tur­al and social imbal­ance) « You Are the Every­thing, » REM (can’t real­ly explain oth­er than they seem to cap­ture a sense of time and mem­o­ry very well)
I found Whole Lot­ta Love’s sex­u­al innu­en­do to be hilarious
« In the Garage » by Weez­er : this song’s lyrics are very geeky and relat­able. I like the Kiss and dnd ref­er­ences and espe­cial­ly love the part about writ­ing your own « stu­pid songs ».  « When the Wild Wind Blows » by Iron Maid­en : this epic song tells a great sto­ry about liv­ing in fear of a nuclear attack. The sto­ry is very human and has a great twist end­ing.  « This Is A Call » by the Foo Fight­ers : The lyrics are extreme­ly strange and don’t seem to mean any­thing. A lot of weird say­ings and images.
This is more a how was the lyric deliv­ered sticks with me. The emo­tion in Creep done acousti­cal­ly will bring goose bumps. Pete Townsends Behind Blue Eyes was a song that spoke to me.
Jour­ney­man by Iron Maid­en. I can’t real­ly explain why the lyrics res­onate with me, but they’re a great exam­ple of lyri­cal poetry.
Wast­ed Years by Iron Maid­en — the mes­sage of the song about acknowl­edg­ing the day-by-day helped me realise I need­ed to wor­ry less about how quick­ly I was accom­plish­ing things in life  Fear Of The Dark by Iron Maid­en — helped me to open my mind to fem­i­nism after grow­ing up with some misog­y­nis­tic ideas, when I con­sid­ered how the lyrics of the song were root­ed in fan­ta­sy hor­ror for men, but could be very real­is­tic for women. It sounds stu­pid now but when I was a teenag­er it shook my world-view a fair bit  My Mind Play­ing Tricks On Me by Geto Boys — intro­duced me to the real­i­ties of men­tal health in the inner city and dero­man­ti­cised the lifestyle of gangs
The Riv­er — emo­tion­al sto­ry­telling Sean and Sand — cap­tured feel­ings as a teenager
« When the Wild Blows » by Iron Maid­en tells a real­ly emo­tion­al and inter­est­ing sto­ry.  « Trib­ute » by Tena­cious D is absolute­ly hilarious.
Iron Maid­en — Holy Smoke, mak­ing fun of reli­gions and being gen­uine­ly fun­ny Hel­loween — Sil­i­con Dreams, empow­er­ing lyrics Rush — 2112, polit­i­cal and with a great story
« The Urge for Going » but Joni Mitchell (per­formed by Tom Rush) « Part of the Plan » by Dan Fogelberg
Lis­ten­ing to « Hur­ri­cane » by Bob Dylan for the first time I was par­tic­u­lar­ly angry after I heard the lyric « All the crim­i­nals in their coats and ties are free to drink mar­ti­nis and watch the sun­rise. » It stunned me how rel­e­vant a lyric from 1975 could be to mod­ern society.
New Kid In Town : « They will nev­er for­get you ’till some­body new comes along ».
Cortez the Killer by Neil Young  I keep get­ting some­thing new out of the song con­sis­tent­ly as years go by.
 Neil Young — White Line The lyrics impact me as it is about the end­ing of a rela­tion­ship and dri­ving on the open road l, lament­ing the loss but also a poten­tial for the future. This res­onates with per­son­al expe­ri­ences i’ve had.
In My Life by The Bea­t­les. The first song that real­ly inspired some intro­spec­tion and thought about my life and where I was going. I was a junior in high­school and thought about how (hope­ful­ly) there were a lot of mem­o­ries ahead and what the shape of my life would look like.  Father to Son by Queen. Real­ly made me think about the role my dad’s beliefs played in my upbring­ing and how, like Fred­dy Mer­cury, rebelling against those ideals or being dif­fer­ent from such expec­ta­tions does­n’t mean you care for such a par­ent any less.  Pink Floyd, The Wall (album or movie). Went through a pret­ty rough patch a few years ago, coin­cid­ing with the Trump elec­tion in the US and took a lot of the dis­il­lu­sion­ment from this album under consideration.
When the wild wind blows — the twist at the end and tra­jic end­ing  M.a.a.D city — the vivid depic­tion of street life and insti­tu­tion­al racisms effects on a com­mu­ni­ty   Moon­child (by king crim­son) — the poet­ic com­po­si­tion of the wording
Strange Things — Hen­ry Green This song touch­es many top­ics in such a way as to have a time­less qual­i­ty. I rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to it.  Man In Black — John­ny Cash For a sim­i­lar rea­son. With­out a cho­rus, the song feels like a jour­ney suc­cinct­ly touch­ing on dif­fer­ent social topics
Queen­sryche — Rev­o­lu­tion Call­ing « I used to trust the media to tell me the truth, tell us the truth. But now i’ve seen the pay­offs every­where I look. Who do you trust when every­one’s a crook. » This speaks to me because of news pro­pa­gan­da. Telling the audi­ence what they want with­out objec­tiv­i­ty. This helped me to iden­ti­fy bias­es in news arti­cles.  Hel­loween — We got the Right « Why don’t you open your eyes. To uncov­er all of these lies. I think you won’t accept this. Go oppose with your fists, fight for your rights ! » As a lib­er­tar­i­an, I see my rights being tak­en away for « secu­ri­ty » and this real­ly speaks to me. This is very preva­lent now with lock­downs.  Iron Maid­en — Paschen­dale « Cru­el­ty has a human heart, every man does play his part. Ter­ror of the men we kill, the human heart is hun­gry still. » Real­ly spoke to me because of my past trau­ma. Some peo­ple just get a sense of pride putting oth­ers down and they will keep doing it.
With you there to help me (Jethro Tull) — the lyrics real­ly speak to my child­hood expe­ri­ence, and being away from home at uni­ver­si­ty want­i­ng to go back and be with my loved ones.
Rea­son to Believe- Spring­steen I could give a mil­lion rea­sons and go on for­ev­er, but per­haps the rel­e­van­cy of the song to the cur­rent state of the world (polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion, envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis, pan­dem­ic) and how it effec­tive­ly con­veys the sense of hope­less­ness dur­ing this time is why it con­nects with me so well.
The Car­pet Crawlers : unique­ly opaque but evoca­tive ; Skat­ing Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day : poet­ic, but very direct and mov­ing ; Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing : increas­ing­ly intense and hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, despite being large­ly non­sen­si­cal cut-ups
Bad­lands- « Poor wan­na be rich, rich man wan­na be king, king ain’t sat­is­fied till he ruled every­thing, gonna go out tonight and find out what I got. »  Spoke about the real­i­ties of cap­i­tal­ism and how stark the real­i­ty of our sys­tem. Was watch­ing a con­cert and the hyp­not­ic drone of the song, woah-oh-oh-oh the crowd would not let it go. Upon review and reflec­tion those lyrics real­ly stood out as what our world was about.  Dark­ness on the Edge of Town « Till some­day, they’ll just cut it loose/ cut it loose or let it drag’em down/ Where no one asks questions/ or looks to long in your face/ In the dark­ness on the edge of down. »  « i’ll be on the hill with every­thing I got, and i’ll be there on time and i’ll pay the cost. »  About leav­ing a life behind and fight­ing for every­thing the char­ac­ter has. The real mean­ing of the song comes with the inten­si­ty sung by Bruce Spring­steen in this song.  Lost in the Flood « Hey kid, you think that’s oil, man that ain’t oil that’s blood. I won­der what he was think­ing when he hit that storm. Or was he just lost in the flood. »  I found rel­e­vance in the lyrics in the sec­ond gulf war, that our for­eign pol­i­cy was about obtain­ing oil.
You’re miss­ing, cap­tures the feel­ing of los­ing someone.
Manowar — a lot of songs of theirs focus on feel­ings of tri­umph and being vic­to­ri­ous, which is very uplift­ing and can be applied to any dif­fi­cul­ty you are fac­ing.   Savatage — so many songs of theirs are incred­i­bly somber and introspective
Inde­pen­dent Day by The Boss, « But won’t you just say good­bye it’s Inde­pen­dence Day », the lyrics was all I felt when cut­ting con­tact with my dad. Jessie’s Girl by Rick Spring­field, « And she’s watch­ing him with those eyes. And she’s lov­ing him with that body, I just know it », it’s frus­trat­ing alright.
It’s Hard to Be a Saint In the City did this because the lyri­cism is incred­i­bly and paints a detailed pic­ture and is prob­a­bly my favorite lyri­cal song ever, and Sul­tans Of Swing also did this for me
No Expec­ta­tions (The Rolling Stones) — « Our love is like the water that splash­es on a stone. Our love is like our music it’s here and then it’s gone » lit­er­al­ly began cry­ing as I typed those lyrics in. The absolute beau­ty of hav­ing fall­en out of love with some­one you once cared about so passionately.
Born to Run This song has a very pow­er­dul mean­ing and had a big impact in my life. When I still lives in Méx­i­co my par­ents would usu­al­ly fight and I real­ly did­n’t like being there, but nei­ther did I liked school, as I bare­ly had any friends, but one day my dad took me on a ride and showed me his CD of Bruce Spring­steen. I was shocked, as it could com­plete­ly under­stand what I was feel­ing in that moment, I want­ed to run some­where else, to such place where I could « walk in the sun ».
Van Mor­ri­son lyrics often reflect my spirituality.
Civ­il War by gnr : I was super young, and remem­ber being affect­ed by the imagery of « the bil­lions shift from side to side »  Thrash­er by Neil Young : nev­er will for­get the open­ing lyrics, for some reason
Some­times it’s a sto­ry that just stays with you, for me that would be songs like New Mod­el Army’s Green and Grey or The Oys­ter­band’s Sins of a Fam­i­ly. Some­times it’s emo­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful songs like The Dublin­ers » The Last of the Great Whales. Or it’s polit­i­cal songs, which for me would often be Ger­man punk songs (espe­cial­ly Die toten Hosen) but also the Oys­ter­band’s We’ll be there, Chum­bawamba’s Homo­pho­bia etc
Some­where stuck in the swamps of jer­sey– the line that made me fall in love with bruce
While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps.  As a gui­tarist, the idea that the instru­ment itself can con­vey emo­tion like that was inter­est­ing to me.
Paschen­dale from Iron Maid­en reminds me of read­ing Ten­nyson. There are obvi­ous sim­i­lar­i­ties but the thing that strikes me is the hope­less­ness of the sol­diers fight­ing the war.   I know what I like by Gen­e­sis. There is some­thing about the way it sets up the every­day man that res­onates. He can’t be both­ered by all these mat­ters oth­er peo­ple go through as proven by the line : « me ? I’m just a lawn­mow­er. You can tell by the way I walk ». There is some­thing uni­ver­sal about that line.
Paschen­dale — Iron Maid­en, the stark imagery of WW1 « life­less bod­ies hang on barbed wire »  Coma — Guns and Ros­es, graph­ic tale of an over­dose and con­scious­ness  Take Take Take — white stripes, sto­ry of an obses­sive fan and a their idol, how they want more and more.
Nev­er­land — a beau­ti­ful love song about peo­ple in a mature rela­tion­ship Jun­gle­land — just a great story
You Don’t Have To Cry — Cros­by, Stills, and Nash. This song left a mark on me because I was able to apply it to what I was expe­ri­enc­ing in my life and real­ize that I was­n’t alone in what I was going through.
A recent exam­ple would be « Fire Truck » by Andy Shauf.  The nar­ra­tor describes his part­ner com­ing home late and there is a fire down the street, yet he is still able to ignore it and pick a fight with her. Anoth­er verse cre­ates a metaphor of the house burn­ing down to that of his rela­tion­ship. The line in the first verse, « some­times I feel like I should nev­er speak again » hits pret­ty hard as well.
Pibroch (cap in hand) by Jethro Tull because it’s very mov­ing and the music feels like it goes through a trans­for­ma­tion that cor­re­sponds with the lyrics.  The Curse by Jethro Tull because it deals with a sen­si­tive top­ic that you would­n’t think a 45 year old man could sing or write about effec­tive­ly or well
Stargaz­er left me a mark because of it’s sto­ry­telling, from the eyes of a man and with mor­tal lan­guage, and as well as how it builds atmos­phere. 16th Cen­tu­ry Greensleaves marked my dis­cov­ery of bold and yet very prac­ti­cal fairy­tale meth­ods of writ­ing about less than dreamy stories.
Fade to Black by metal­li­ca i just relat­ed to lyrics and where i was in life
Tan­geld Up in Blue, showed me that you can tell a sto­ry with a song. Bad­lands, helps me when ever I feel down and sad, love the line « Poor man wan­na be rich, rich man wan­na be king and a king ain’t sat­is­fied until he rules everything ».
The Promised Land. Through­out the song, the lyrics speak most­ly of being in a rough sit­u­a­tion and being beat down by the world. Yet the mes­sage always returns dur­ing the cho­rus to the idea of pre­serv­ing and believ­ing in a bet­ter tomor­row, wher­ev­er that hap­pens to be for you
« I’m afraid of the way that I live my life/ I’m afraid of the way I don’t/ I’m afraid of the things that I wan­na do but I won’t » Big Bird by AJJ I res­onate with this verse, as I am often anx­ious about all the pos­si­ble choic­es that I do or do not make.  « I love you more than the stars in the sky/ but your name just escapes me tonight » 1930 by the Gaslight Anthem These lyrics remind me of my grand­moth­er dur­ing her last days. She was intu­bat­ed and had carpal tun­nel, and so could only com­mu­ni­cate through ges­tures  «  « Cause this does not feel like a holiday/ Even with the fresh bread bak­ing downstairs/ I hope you get home soon » LGA by Wakey!Wakey ! My dog died a cou­ple weeks ago then this song came up on shuf­fle and i’ve been lis­ten­ing to it repeat­ed­ly. When­ev­er I’d bake bread I’d feed her some when it was ready.
Have a Bruce Spring­steen lyric tat­tooed on my arm
Lost in the Flood, Bruce Spring­steen ; tells a great sto­ry, poet­ic lyrics, descrip­tive.  Ode to the Mets, The Strokes ; relat­able lyrics, poet­ic.  Good Rid­dance (Time of Your Life), Green Day ; ubiq­ui­tous sub­ject mat­ter, relat­able, poetic.
« I know some­day you’ll have a beau­ti­ful life, I know you’ll be a star in some­body else’s life but why, why, why can’t it be mine ? » — Black, Pearl Jam
Wish you were here (pink floyd) becuase my father passed away and it was a song we both loved, it leaves its mark on me becuase i wish he was here.
The lyrics of the song Tel­e­va­tors by the Mars Vol­ta paints a haunt­ing image of sui­cide which com­bined with the gui­tar part cre­ate the sad­dest song I know. The Bea­t­les » Eleanor Rig­by also has awe­some imagery.
Absolute­ly Free, reminds me of my acid days back in Vic­to­ria Thick as a brick, the entire piece is my life Hey hey my my, a rock anthem that just rebounds with me
Kayleigh, by Mar­il­lion, spoke about split­ting up with some­one. I tru­ly relat­ed to it at the time.
« if i could have my wast­ed days back, would i use them to get back on track ? » — Fran­tic by Metal­li­ca.  « It grips you, so hold me ! It stains you, so hold me ! It hates you, so hold me ! It holds you, so hold me ! Until it sleeps » — Until It Sleeps by Metal­li­ca (the deliv­ery of these lyrics is what makes them spe­cial)  « Father time, I’m run­ning late. I’m wind­ing down, I’m grow­ing tired. Sec­onds drift into the night. The clock just ticks till my time expires » — Time : The Begin­ning by Megadeth
Wait­ing for the sun by the doors. Espe­cial­ly the « this is the strangest life i’ve ever known » it real­ly makes you think about what life means.   Good times bad times- the first lyrics are always like a wake up call to me  Child in time- it makes you think about how priv­i­leged you are not to be a vic­tim of the war like so many inno­cent chil­dren were
I often choose new songs to learn on gui­tar based on lyrics rather than oth­er aspects of the song. For exam­ple, I recent­ly learned Burlap String by Court­ney Marie Andrews after only hear­ing it the first time that day. The lyrics just res­onat­ed with me so much that I felt com­pelled to learn the song.
Pret­ty much any­thing by saba­ton because their songs are all based on his­tor­i­cal bat­tles and events. They’re one of the bands that I find myself get­ting teary eyed while lis­ten­ing.  Iron maid­en has a vast discog­ra­phy and the lyri­cal con­tent of their music is equal­ly diverse. I have found sev­er­al nov­els and books through their music.  Mastodon is anoth­er band that have a great lyri­cal strength and the fact the major­i­ty of their discog­ra­phy is con­cep­tu­al in nature solid­i­fies their stand­ing on my list.
Bril­liant dis­guise and the way it explains how you feel
Ham­mond Song, The Roche Sis­ters « Do your eyes have an answer/To this song of mine/They say we meet again/On down the line/Where is on down the line/How far away?/Tell me I’m okay »  Let the Wind Car­ry Me, Joni Mitchell/ « But it pass­es like the sum­mer, I’m a wild seed again/ Let the wind car­ry me »  You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio, Joni Mitchell — « Oh no you don’t like weak women, you get bored so quick/and you don’t like strong women/cuz they’re hip to your tricks »
For­tu­nate Son epit­o­mizes the adage that wars are start­ed by the rich and fought by the poor.
Hurt by nin has pow­er­ful lyrics that makes me think a lot about loneliness
Time — Pink Floyd First time the lyrics of a song stuck with me in a seri­ous way  In My Life — The Bea­t­les Puts life into per­spec­tive in a beau­ti­ful way to me  Il Mio Can­to Libero — Lucio Bat­tisti Ital­ian song with a strong theme
Des­o­la­tion row, what if lucin­da williams
« Long Black Veil » sort of a twist end­ing to the song takes it to a dif­fer­ent lev­el.  « Mas­ters of War » kind of fits every gen­er­a­tion regard­ing a fear of war.
King by Lau­ren Aquili­na  You’re alone You’re on your own So what, have you gone blind ? Have you for­got­ten what you have and what is yours ? Glass half emp­ty, glass half full Well, either way you won’t be going thirsty Count your bless­ings not your flaws  I am not sure why, but these lyrics make me very emo­tion­al and it’s some­thing that I find I can eas­i­ly relate to.   Anoth­er song is Last Great Amer­i­can Whale by Lou Reed  They say, « Things are done for the major­i­ty » Don’t believe half of what you see and none of what you hear It’s like what my painter friend Don­ald said to me « Stick a fork in their ass and turn ’em over, they’re done »  Although not real­ly a song, I real­ly enjoyed the nar­ra­tive that he devel­oped through­out the song and includ­ed ten­sions such as the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age humans have caused the Earth and also racism.  A final song is Van Gogh’s Ear by Sea­mus Fog­a­r­ty. I don’t have a list of lyrics for this song, but the imagery cre­at­ed by the lyrics is very haunt­ing, as well as the fact that the song sup­pos­es that Van Gogh cut his ear off in a fit of mad­ness in need to « feel some­thing » and be dif­fer­ent from oth­ers is very powerful.
The Troop­er, Aces high, Alive, touched ona very per­son­al and pro­foud way. War, strug­gle, psychology.
Many, such as 1. My Father’s House (Bruce Spring­steen) which depicts a con­flict­ed famil­ial rela­tion­ship in a very show-not-tell way which I felt I could relate to, and 2. Why We Build The Wall (Anais Mitchell) as its social com­men­tary seemed remark­ably prescient.
Bob Dylan — It’s Alright Ma Joni Mitchell — The Cir­cle Game The Smiths — There Is A Light That Nev­er Goes Out
The promised land by Bruce Spring­steen as I can relate to most of the song
Like A Rolling Stone. Bril­liant song with absolute­ly amaz­ing lyrics that seem to tell the sto­ry of some­body get­ting what they deserve  Just Like a Woman. Pos­si­bly the finest song ever writ­ten and cer­tain­ly Dylan’s best
I like to match my mood or con­ver­sa­tion with song lyrics Don’t do it — the band « dont you break my heart.… Please don’t do it »
1.Flight if Icarus — not being reli­gious i did­n’t know the sto­ry the burnt wings fly­ing too close to the sun. Bruce can weave an amaz­ing tale 2. Four Horse­mem — taught me about the 4 horse­men of the apocalypse
Thun­der Road, I had nev­er heard lyrics like it .  The Riv­er, beau­ti­ful sto­ry made me feel like I’d been through the same as the narrator
Dea­con Blues-Steely Dan  Eleanor Rig­by- The Bea­t­les  In My Life-The Beatles
Only a pawn in their game by Dylan opened my eyes to the pup­peteers that pull the strings to per­pet­u­ate sys­temic racism  I believe in you by Neil Young helped deal with many sit­u­a­tions in rela­tion­ships over the years  Riv­er, and Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell taught me its ok to be con­fused by love and not have all the answers
Entre Nous (Rush) made me think about per­son­al rela­tion­ships. Nut­shell (Alice in Chains) stays like a brava­do about being myself. Rearviewmir­ror (Pearl Jam) made me think about my moth­er suf­fer­ing abuse and final­ly get­ting a divorce.
You’ll nev­er know the hurt i suf­fered and all the pain I rised above, and i’ll nev­er know the same about you, and it makes me feel so sor­ry  Life is what’s hap­pen­ing when you’re busy mak­ing plans.
Pink Floyd — The final cut, stopped me in my steps at the line « Could any­body love him or is it just a crazy dream ».  Pink Floyd — When the Tigers Broke free, still makes my eyes water. Bruce Spring­steen — Youngstown, « Them big boys did what Hitler could­n’t do » makes me shiv­er at the gut punch small towns have taken.
Stair­way to Heav­en was a song who’s lyrics I had been try­ing to uncov­er for a while. Upon find­ing out what they meant, the song has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mean­ing to me and I love it so much more. Dark Side of the Moon Album (and lit­er­al­ly every Pink Floyd song). I just think lyri­cal­ly this song is real­ly pow­er­ful. Thick as a Brick. Love the music, but know­ing the mean­ing behind the lyrics makes the song so much more enjoyable.
I HAVE MORE THAN THESE TWO, BUT I COULDNT PICK ONLY 3   NIGHT RIDE HOME   Once in a while In a big blue moon There comes a night like this Like some sur­re­al­ist Invent­ed this 4th of July Night Ride Home  Hula girls and cater­pil­lar trac­tors in the sand The ukulele man The fire­works This 4th of July Night Ride Home  I love the man beside me We love the open road No phones till Fri­day Far from the overkill Far from the over­load  Back at the bar The band tears down But out here in the head­light beams The sil­ver pow­er­lines Gleam On this 4th of July Night Ride Home  Round the curve And a big dark horse Red tail­lights on his hide Is keep­ing right along­side Rev for stride 4th of July Night Ride Home  I love the man beside me We love the open road No phones till Fri­day Far from the under­tow Far from the over­load  Once in awhile In a big blue moon There comes a night like this Like some sur­re­al­ist Invent­ed this 4th of July Night Ride Home   SONG FOR SHARON I went to stat­en island. To buy myself a man­dolin and i saw the long white dress of love on a store­front man­nequin big boat chug­gin » back with a bel­ly full of cars… All for some­thing lacy some girl’s going to see that dress and crave that day like crazy Lit­tle indi­an kids on a bridge up in cana­da they can bal­ance and they can climb like their fathers before them they’ll walk the gird­ers of the man­hat­tan sky­line shine your light on me miss lib­er­ty because as soon as this fer­ry boat docks i’m head­ed to the church to play bin­go fleece me with the gam­blers » flocks I can keep my cool at pok­er but i’m a fool when love’s at stake because i can’t con­ceal emo­tion what i’m feel­ing’s always writ­ten on my face there’s a gyp­sy down on bleeck­er street i went in to see her as a kind of joke and she lit a can­dle for my love luck and eigh­teen bucks went up in smoke Sharon, i left my man at a north dako­ta junc­tion and i came out to the « big apple » here to face the dream’s mal­func­tion love’s a rep­e­ti­tious dan­ger you’d think i’d be accus­tomed to well, i do accept the changes at least bet­ter than i used to do A woman i knew just drowned her­self the well was deep and mud­dy she was just shak­ing off futil­i­ty or pun­ish­ing some­body my friends were call­ing up all day yes­ter­day all emo­tions and abstrac­tions it seems we all live so close to that line and so far from sat­is­fac­tion Dora says, « have chil­dren ! » mama and bet­sy say-« find your­self a char­i­ty. » help the needy and the crip­pled or put some time into ecol­o­gy. » well, there’s a wide wide world of noble caus­es and love­ly land­scapes to dis­cov­er but all i real­ly want right now is… Find anoth­er lover When we were kids in maid­stone, sharon i went to every wed­ding in that lit­tle town to see the tears and the kiss­es and the pret­ty lady in the white lace wed­ding gown and walk­ing home on the rail­road tracks or swing­ing on the play­ground swing love stim­u­lat­ed my illu­sions more than any­thing And when i went skat­ing after gold­en reg­gie you know it was white lace i was chas­ing chas­ing dreams mama’s nylons under­neath my cow­girl jeans he showed me first you get the kiss­es and then you get the tears but the cer­e­mo­ny of the bells and lace still veils this reck­less fool here Now there are 29 skaters on wol­mann rink cir­cling in sin­gles and in pairs in this vig­or­ous anonymi­ty a blank face at the win­dow stares and stares and stares and stares and the pow­er of rea­son and the flow­ers of deep feel­ing seem to serve me only to deceive me Sharon you’ve got a hus­band and a fam­i­ly and a farm i’ve got the apple of temp­ta­tion and a dia­mond snake around my arm but you still have your music and i’ve still got my eyes on the land and the sky you sing for your friends and your fam­i­ly i’ll walk green pas­tures by and by
Bring Me The Hori­zon — Teardrops : The song tells a sto­ry of men­tal strug­gles over­com­ing a per­son. With me hav­ing had men­tal health issues in the past, the song spoke to me.  In Flames — (This is) Our House : The lyrics gets me run­ning with adren­a­line with the sto­ry of get­ting called togeth­er and march­ing to vic­to­ry as one group. I use the song to pump myself at the gym
« Urge for Going » — part­ly because the lyrics are so beau­ti­ful and poet­ic, and part­ly because it is an inter­est­ing theme of peo­ple nev­er feel­ing set­tled, always mov­ing on toward the next thing.  « Some Oth­er Time » (Alan Par­sons Project) — made me think about the uni­verse, and time, and how it is all connected.
Near­ly all the tra­di­tion­al songs I love for the sto­ry they tell, from « I’d rather a kiss from dead Mat­ty’s lips » to  » death had put an end to his growing »
All of Flo­rence and the Machine’s, but if I could only pick three :  1. Leave My Body 2. Queen of Peace 3. Mother
Odet­ta singing Why and Why .Which is a Guthry song about a young child ask­ing sil­ly ques­tions and her final answer is « Because I don’t know the answer ! Good­night Good­night »  Which sums up a moth­ers reac­tion that she does not have all the answers.  Dylans lyrics are often descrip­tive ie  « Down the Roads The Dogs Are Barking »

 

Avez-vous un type de parole préféré ?
Favourite types of lyrics are ones that pro­vide either inter­est­ing sto­ry­telling or ones that I can relate to.
Lyrics about prob­lems of soci­ety lyrics that tells a sto­ry on it’s own lyrics that makes no sense
Pas­sion­ate (I like songs that you can con­nect to in some way)
Lyrics that actu­al­ly mean some­thing. Have a sto­ry and emo­tion behind them
I enjoy lyrics most when they are very poet­ic and have a deep mean­ing, and pair­ing it to a nice melody. The Doors did a great job of this :  « This is the land where the Pharaoh die The Negroes in the for­est bright­ly feath­ered They are say­ing, For­get the night Live with us in forests of azure »  ‑Jim Morrison/The Doors
« In my world, the Dev­il dances and dares to leave my soul just any­where ».   Song of the Siren. Tim Buck­ley.   I get chills when I hear this and I feel like crying.
I real­ly like lyrics that tell a sto­ry, much like dark side of the moon. Anoth­er exam­ple would be Roy­al Orleans by Led Zep­pelin. The lyrics to think song always intrigued me and set the tone for the whole song
I like lyrics that start off as being very somber, but also have a bit of a groove to them. Some­thing like gal­lows pole. Anoth­er enjoy­able type of lyrics for me is start­ing off nice and peace­ful, and then going into a more aggres­sive sound
Any music that I can relate to and con­nect with my own life whether it be a rela­tion­ship or an emo­tion that I am feel­ing at that time. An exam­ple of this is the Bea­t­les song, « And I love her. » I can relate to this song because it sparks images in my head of some­body in my life that I feel the same way about. Relat­ing to lyrics is a mas­sive part of music for me and one of the things that can get me to like just about any song, regard­less of the genre or sound.
Polit­i­cal and soci­etal : all about rel­e­vant top­ics and has the biggest impact on society
1. Mytho­log­i­cal lyrics : « His eyes seem so glazed As he flies on the wings of a dream, Now he knows his father betrayed Now his wings turn to ash­es to ash­es his grave. »- flight of Icarus — Iron Maid­en 2. Hard rock Lyrics : « Can you remem­ber, remem­ber my name ? As I flow through your life A thou­sand oceans I have flown And cold spir­its of ice All my life I am the echo of your past (echo of your past) »-Per­fect Strangers- Deep Pur­ple 3. Met­al lyrics (  angst, anger)-  « Make his fight on the hill in the ear­ly day Con­stant chill deep inside Shout­ing gun, on they run through the end­less grey On the fight, for they are right, yes, by who’s to say ? »-For Whom The Bell Tolls-Metallica
Com­plex lyrics with sym­bol­ism as well as lyrics that cre­ates an image in your head
I can’t real­ly think of any exam­ples, but my favorite lyrics always seem to include a vibe of new begin­nings, adven­ture, love, etc. Ram­ble On- Led Zep­pelin  No Sleep- Caamp Out on The Week­end- Neil Young
Abstract/ psy­che­del­ic like Hen­drix’s lyrics in are you expe­ri­enced and lit­tle wing
John prine
1. Lyrics that are deep and mean­ing­ful, kind of like they are speak­ing direct­ly to your soul and reach­ing out to it to help.   2. « Cheesy but his­toric lyrics made at the back of the garage while sip­ping beer and jam­ming to over­played Black Sab­bath songs with friends in the garage » type of lyrics
I guess I like lyrics that make you think. Not that I’m some kind of snob­by schol­ar, I can get down to « The Lemon Song » which repeat­ed­ly tell the lis­ten­er to « squeeze my lemon » if you catch his drift. I just appre­ci­ate when an artist puts a lot of time and effort into lyrics that are thought­ful and make the lis­ten think about « stuff. » Whether that « stuff » is mor­tal­i­ty and life pass­ing you by like in the Cir­cle Game, or war in War Pigs by Black Sabbath.
Slice of life lyrics.  It is fun to be tak­en away for a while to a dif­fer­ent time and place.
-A first exam­ple would be that I like lyrics about the type of places I grew up in, and this ties back to my love of « small town » by john mel­len­camp. ‑Sec­ond­ly, I also have a love for deep lyrics that are clever enough to slight­ly hid their true mean­ing to the lis­ten­er. An exam­ple is « born in the USA » by bruce spring­steen. It sounds pro-amer­i­ca, but it crit­i­cizes the gov­ern­ment. ‑Last­ly, I love lyrics that relate to how I feel about some­one. Whether it be my par­ents, sib­lings, friends, or a lover.
Eso­teric, clever, ref­er­ence laced and metaphor­ic. I think a per­fect exam­ple is the lyri­cal com­po­si­tions behind albums like To Pimp A But­ter­fly. Also Amer­i­can Pie by Don mclean
Imag­i­na­tive, thought-pro­vok­ing Coop­er­a­tion with music rather than being the focus in and of them­selves (ie, song itself is enjoy­able even if you don’t speak Eng­lish, not as lyric-ori­ent­ed as some­thing like Dylan)
Most­ly sto­ry lyrics. Sul­tans of song comes to mind. Wish you were here as well
I real­ly like songs and lyrics that tell a sto­ry, and I know most songs are about telling sto­ries, but I like it when they’re real­ly spe­cif­ic. For exam­ple, songs like « House of the Ris­ing Sun » by The Ani­mals, « A Day in the Life » by the Bea­t­les, « Yel­low Sub­ma­rine » by the Bea­t­les, « Bohemi­an Rhap­sody » by Queen, « Mon­ey for Noth­ing » by Dire Straits, « Hotel Cal­i­for­nia » by The Eagles, and « Strai­way to Heav­en » by Zep­pelin, all have an arc or sto­ry that they fol­low and are gen­er­al­ly pret­ty long, where­as oth­er songs just repeat the same things over and over, how much they love some­one or some­thing. The rep­e­ti­tion isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, but I real­ly like it when songs evolve when you lis­ten to them. I also like songs that are about free­dom and mak­ing your own way in life. Songs like « Dream On » by Aero­smith, « Free Bird » by Lynyrd Skynyrd, « Go Your Own Way » by Fleet­wood Mac, and « A Horse with No Name » by Amer­i­ca are all about being free in their own way. Some songs just say you should be free and pur­sue your dreams and oth­ers are more dis­crete about it. I think I like songs like this most just because it’s real­ly impor­tant to me, being free and pur­su­ing your dreams in life. I also like songs with polit­i­cal mes­sages, like « Run Through the Jun­gle » by CCR, « Won’t Get Fooled Again » by the Who, « For What It’s Worth » by Buf­fa­lo Spring­field, « Rev­o­lu­tion » by The Bea­t­les, and « For­tu­nate Son » by CCR. For me these act as fun his­to­ry lessons (I’m 16, so all this music is « before my time) which is nice, since I get to learn about impor­tant events in the past while also list­ing to some good music. These nor­mal­ly have a lot pas­sion behind them too, since it’s some­thing real­ly impor­tant to the song­writer, so it brings more emo­tion out.
I like lyrics which rep­re­sent some­thing majestic(Kashmir).
I real­ly like metaphor and sym­bol­ism. It gives a song dif­fer­ent lay­ers and mean­ings for the lis­ten­er to enjoy. Things like Pink Floyds The Wall where social detatch­ment is depict­ed as a wall with dif­fer­ent bricks that com­prise it.  I also enjoy rep­e­ti­tion to high­light con­trast, such as in the Bare­naked Ladies » One Week.
No direct exam­ples but any­thing that is thought pro­vok­ing or I can relate to my own life makes music much more mean­ing­ful to me. That’s why I don’t enjoy mum­ble rap, if a pro­fane 10 year old could have writ­ten it, I’m alright with­out it.
Lyrics that are mean­ing­ful, rich of col­or­ful language.
Any lyrics that actu­al­ly mean some­thing, maybe some auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal ones, in a way
I real­ly like lyrics that use beau­ti­ful imagery, are thought­ful or have clever wordplay.
Lyrics that can be inter­pret­ed in a mul­ti­tude of ways are amaz­ing. If a per­son can make mil­lions of peo­ple think dif­fer­ent things from a small set of words then they’re a genius.
I think my favorite lyrics are ones that are a bit uncon­ven­tion­al. I don’t like being able to eas­i­ly pre­dict what a singer will sing. I think Alex Turn­er of the Arc­tic Mon­keys is the best lyri­cist of my gen­er­a­tion. Incred­i­ble way with words.
Exis­ten­tial lyrics I can relate to
Lyrics that are deep and meaningful
Mul­ti­ple vers­es think Amer­i­can Pie, Sym­pa­thy, Tan­gled, Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion all great exam­ples of lots of vers­es not just a cou­ple repeated
It’s a long way to the top If you wan­na rock ’n’ roll It’s a long way to the top If you wan­na rock ’n’ roll If you wan­na be a star of stage and screen Look out it’s rough and mean
Fan­ta­sy such as The Bat­tle of Ever­more.  Rock and Roll such as Black Dog.  Sto­ry such as Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
As before : lyrics such as Ten Years Gone and Time, which rem­i­nisce about life and the expe­ri­ences it imparts, as well as fur­ther rumi­na­tions on death and the « after ».
I love folk lyrics that have a deep mean­ing about soci­ety and the sim­ple life.
Lyrics that tell a sto­ry. Young Lust, Open Car, The Rain Song. These lyrics have a sub­stance.  Hope this helps
See the exam­ples in ques­tion box #24. I gen­er­al­ly like songs that tell a good sto­ry, but the music must punc­tu­ate the sto­ry.  Relat­able, non-cheesy love songs are real­ly good too. For exam­ple, « A Man i’ll Nev­er Be » by Boston and « Land of the Mir­a­cle » by Edguy, but once again, the music and deliv­ery takes prece­dence over the words themselves.
I think my type of lyric gen­er­al­ly trends toward being more philo­soph­i­cal than sto­ry based. Bal­lads are great, but I real­ly appre­ci­ate them for hit­ting a philo­soph­i­cal point or truth.
I like the old hokum style Lady, Your Clock Ain’t Right — kiki John­son It’s a tough one to artic­u­late, but it man­ages to car­ry emo­tion­al impact for me  Mama I Hope You’re Sat­is­fied — Whistlin » Rufus If you haven’t lis­tened to hokum before these are good places to start
Lyrics that are based on per­son­al sit­u­a­tions of the artists cre­ate that much more emo­tion into the music as well such as with Queen­sryche’s Bridge and Iron Maid­en’s Blood Broth­ers  Lyrics that tell a sto­ry help me envi­sion the sto­ry as the music pro­gress­es such as with Iron Maid­en’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Book of Souls  Lyrics that are crit­i­cal of author­i­ty’s cor­rup­tion and lust for war such as with Black Sab­bath’s War Pigs and Judas Priest’s Stained Class
Vel­vet Green (Jethro Tull) — great met­rics and metaphor for sex in the fields, celtic themes  Cold Wind to Val­hal­la (Jethro Tull) — the met­rics, the vocab­ullary, is just amaz­ing  Cup of Won­der (Jethro Tull) — « And those who ancient lines did lay will heed this song that calls them back » is a godamn triple ref­er­ence to poets writ­ing lines, druids set­ting up stones, and ley lines.
I like lyrics that are authen­tic to the artist.  Authen­tic­i­ty not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean­ing that it is some­thing the artist has expe­ri­enced, but the emo­tions are real because the artist believes that what they are singing is true or car­ries weight.  E.g. John­ny Cash when singing I Hung My Head or Bruce Spring­steen singing Down­bound Train.  Cash nev­er shot a horse­man and Spring­steen was nev­er a fac­to­ry work­er who lost his job, but both under­stand and empathize with the char­ac­ters in these songs and sing them truthfully.
Not sure I under­stand what you mean by type of lyric.  But sto­ry telling lyrics. Thun­der Road, Lost in the Flood good examples.
Deep think­ing ones, cap­ture a feeling
I pre­fer lyrics as men­tioned in #24 that con­vey some kind of life experience/emotion. Ex : Dio Holy Div­er (no one knows what this is about it def­i­nite­ly feels like its teach­ing a life les­son)  I also great­ly pre­fer lyrics that tell a sto­ry, with or with­out a moral — ex : Rain­bow « stargaz­er » , Iron Maid­en « Rime of the ancient mariner »  Com­ing from met­al, I have to men­tion that I hate grow­ly, bark­ing vocals where the lyrics are unintelligible.
Old rock, like from the 60s to the 80s most­ly. New wave-kind of alter­na­tive rock is also real­ly cool.
Any lyric that’s tells a sto­ry, but like a good sto­ry, not gener­ic break up sto­ries about love or stuff like that.
I think I like lyrics that have a descrip­tive, per­son­al, or maybe some­what unex­pect­ed qual­i­ty best. Ex : Phoebe Bridgers » song « Gar­den Song » (« Some­day, I’m gonna live / in your house up on the hill / and when your skin­head neigh­bor goes miss­ing / i’ll plant a gar­den in the yard, then »)
Favorite — descrip­tive, ambigu­ous, and sur­re­al ; lyrics that tell the sto­ry of a moment in time, which can be almost dream like and relat­able with­out hav­ing a spe­cif­ic top­ic  Also ; bal­lads — telling a tale, or lyrics describ­ing a sit­u­a­tion that evokes strong feelings
My favorite type of lyrics are the ones that have a strong meaning.
Nos­tal­gic, relat­able. Emotional
Sto­ry­telling lyrics, like the way Mark Knopfler can take seem­ing­ly mun­dane and every­day things and turn them into fleshed out songs.
Inform know if I can pro­vide exam­ples but a lot of mod­ern pop­songs are very banal and uses very sim­pli­fied lan­guage as well as a lot of rep­e­ti­tion. This is what I don’t like if that was­n’t clear.
Lyrics that tell a sto­ry and lyrics I can relate to or aspire to or that I find inspiring
Exam­ples : Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Iron Maid­en, Dance of Death by Iron Maid­en, Stargaz­er by Rain­bow.  My favorite type is epic and the­atri­cal sto­ry­telling lyrics that tell a tale about an event, adven­ture, or some­thing sim­i­lar. Espe­cial­ly with a medieval theme, or just a his­tor­i­cal set­ting in gen­er­al, whether the tale itself is fic­tion­al or based on a real sto­ry.  The clos­est term for this type of lyrics would be pow­er met­al lyrics.
Some­thing that tells a sto­ry, like Jun­gle­land or Tan­gled Up In Blue (Bob Dylan)
Music with a social or soci­etal mes­sage. It’s not folk music, but IDLES » 2018 album « Joy as an Act of Resis­tance » real­ly encap­su­lates this.
I love sad/ni­hilis­tic/break-up lyrics.  A cou­ple exam­ples would be :  Smash­ing Pump­kins — Zero Bright Eyes — Let’s Not Shit Our­selves (To Love And Be Loved) Bil­ly Joel — Tomor­row Is Today
Likes : surrealistic/psychedelic imagery, inten­tion­al­ly vague or ambigu­ous mean­ing, feels « per­son­al ». Exam­ple — ambu­lance blues by neil young  Dis­likes : too « on the nose », hokey or campy, over­ly hap­py. Exam­ple — mar­rakesh Express by CSN
I love when lyrics com­bine with the instru­men­ta­tion to cre­ate an atmos­phere and set­ting so well made, that it makes it a whole world of it’s own, and you can expand upon it.
Ones that have emo­tion­al mean­ing behind them and are relat­able to me.
Lyrics that can have mul­ti­ple mean­ings and can make you think about your life
Songs that explore themes of exis­tence and the pas­sage of time are usu­al­ly my favorite.
Imagery like that in the two afore­men­tioned songs.
I like those lyrics that make you think after you hear them
I love Joni Mitchel­l’s lyrics because of their poet­i­cism. I enjoy lyrics that tug at your emo­tions and tell deep, com­plex stories.
I enjoy nar­ra­tive dri­ven songs such as peren­ni­al quest by death, empire of the clouds by Iron maid­en, and keep­er of the sev­en keys by hel­loween.  All of these songs are pro­gres­sive in nature and have a 7  run time full of storyline.
I real­ly like flow­ery lan­guage in songs, as well as lyrics that are more « mys­te­ri­ous ».  E.g. She Had the World by Pan­ic ! At The Dis­co  She held the world upon a string But she did­n’t ever hold me Spun the stars on her fin­ger­nails But it nev­er made her hap­py  Amelia by Joni Mitchell Maybe i’ve nev­er real­ly loved I guess that is the truth i’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy alti­tudes And look­ing down on every­thing I crashed into his arms Amelia it was just a false alarm  Lit­tle Green by Joni Mitchell Born with the moon in can­cer Choose her a name she will answer to Call her green and the win­ters can­not fade her Call her green for the chil­dren who’ve made her Lit­tle green, be a gyp­sy dancer
His­to­ry, war, human strug­gle, hope, mistery
Lyrics that are poet­ic and usu­al­ly tell a sto­ry, and don’t feel too spe­cif­ic to the per­son who sings them
Over time, I have real­ized my favorite lyrics are ones that are more free-flow­ing. I like lyrics that rather than insist­ing they have mean­ing, can sim­ply be visu­al, poet­ic, and wordy.  A great exam­ple of this would be Bob Dylan’s « Mr. Tam­bourine Man ». These lyrics are impres­sion­is­tic, sur­re­al at times, and open to inter­pre­ta­tion, or open to no inter­pre­ta­tion at all.
Bob Dylan’s lyrics. There are few that have mas­tery over the Eng­lish lan­guage like he does.
Lyrics that are clever and twist the phrase around.  Lyrics that have heart­felt meaning.
Songs that tell sto­ries, eg. Jun­gle­land, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Now that you found your­self los­ing your mind are you here again ? Find­ing that once you once thought was real is gone and chang­ing.  Neil Young nails how I feel look­ing in the mir­ror some morn­ings, love and rela­tion­ships are hard.   I believe in the love that you gave me. I believe in a faith that can save me. I believe and I hope and pray that some day it may raise me above these bad­lands. You got­ta live your life each day, let the bro­ken hearts stand as the price you got­ta pay. Keep push­ing ’cause it’s under­stood, some day these bad­land­s’ll start treat­ing us good — Spring­steen rais­es me up with hope and courage   You know that Lou­vre muse­um ?  They got­ta lot­ta pret­ty pic­tures  Some­day i’ll go see ’em Take a good run­ning start Throw myself against the wall  I’d rather feel that than feel noth­ing at all   — War­ren Zevon, because some days it be like that
My favourite lyrics talk about human rela­tions and behav­iour (Entre Nous, Do the Evo­lu­tion) and dreams and life goals (Mid­dle­town Dreams, Mission).
I like the lyrics to tell a sto­ry rather than being about some abstract con­cept, It real­ly height­ens the dra­mat­ic effect of a song for me beyond the instru­men­tal effect (For exam­ple Meat­loaf’s « Bat Out Of Hell » or Iron Maid­en’s « Hal­lowed Be Thy Name »)
Ones that tell a sto­ry or his­to­ry les­son i.e. Youngstown, Wreck of The Edmund Fitzger­ald.  Ones that con­vey a piece of wis­dom or truth ex « All men want to be rich, a rich man wants to be king and a king at sat­is­fied til he rules every­thing » Ones that are poet­i­cal in nature ex Jethro Tul­l’s Moths
I real­ly like lyrics that sound real­ly beau­ti­ful and hold a lot of emo­tion to them. But most­ly if they real­ly sound cool. For exam­ple 1. And silent replies that swirl invi­ta­tion Flow dark and trou­bled to an oily sea A grim inti­ma­tion of what is to be 2. And as we wind on down the road, our shad­ows taller than our souls 3. Cloud­less every­day You fall upon my wak­ing eyes Invit­ing and incit­ing me to rise
I love songs where I can see a movie from the lyrics   Lil­ly, Rose­mary and the Jack of Hearts Paint my Mas­ter­piece  Tan­gled up in Blue  Bob Dylan  Aca­di­an Drift­wood  Rob­bie Robert­son  Song for Sharon  Joni
The Child Bal­lards — I like a song with a sto­ry, with a begin­ning a mid­dle and an end.
- Pas­sion­ate — Intense — Hon­est — Dark — Strange — Descrip­tive  — Lots of imagery and metaphors — Reli­gious and mytho­log­i­cal ref­er­ences  1. « Drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beat­ing heart » (from « Howl ») 2. « I can’t help but pull the earth around me to make my bed » (from « Ship to Wreck ») 3. « Every­thing I ever did was just anoth­er way to scream your name » (from « South Lon­don For­ev­er »)  Again all choic­es are writ­ten by Flo­rence Welch (of Flo­rence and the Machine)
Sto­ry­tale Songs such as The Ran­dall Knife.
A good sto­ry always get me. It’s prob­a­bly the only thing that will take the focus out of the music (my usu­al main focus)
Emo­tion­al lyrics that tell a story
As above — sto­ry telling, thought pro­vok­ing, trancelike
Lyrics that describe human emo­tion-sad­ness, anger, hope and hope­less­ness, etc
Lyrics that are poet­ry and come from the heart
I love lyrics that deal with real life. The strug­gles of every­day peo­ple or those that tell sad sto­ries. I love the use of imagery, metaphors, etc.  Bob dylan — boots of span­ish leather. A sto­ry of two lovers that are falling apart. Don mclean — amer­i­can pie. The day the music died = day when bud­dy hol­ly died.
I like lyrics that have sto­rys in them, like tan­geld up in blue  i like lyrics with a mes­sage like blowin » in the wind.  I like lyrics that deliv­er a punch, like like a rolling stone
Mississippi/tangled up in blue/the unfaith­ful ser­vant — sto­ry­telling com­bined with imagery and room for per­son­al interpretations.
Even though my favorite genre is prog, my favorite lyrics are almost always out­side of prog. I’m not a huge fan of prog lyrics ! What i do love are lyrics that a) tell a sto­ry,  b) have tons of prosody (inter­nal rhyme, asso­nance, con­so­nance) and c) describe with words the same moods con­veyed by the music.
I like lyrics about bro­ken love or lost love or break ups.
I like poet­ic metaphor­i­cal lyrics. « and you and i » by yes is one of my favorite songs, but the lyrics are word sal­ad ;it’s more about how the words make you feel than what they mean.  I like lyrics that tell a sto­ry. Al stew­art’s songs — let’s take year of the cat as an exam­ple — are able to tell a fair­ly com­plete sto­ry with char­ac­ters and plot in 5 min­utes. Steely dan does sim­i­lar, cre­at­ing a tiny world for the length of the song.
I like lyrics that are under­stand­able on mul­ti­ple lev­els with­out being too obfus­cat­ed or obscure.  But lyrics that give you a deep­er under­stand­ing of your­self and the world. Some­thing like rush’s « cir­cum­stances » or peter gabriel’s « don’t give up ».
Con­crete imagery, eg « safe as milk » by cap­tain beef­heart ; com­e­dy or self-par­o­dy, eg « oh, dad­dy ! » or « surfer dan » by the turtles
Types ? You should elab­o­rate on this ques­tion more.   ‑i do like metaphors, i real­ly liked imag­ine drag­ons » works before they turned pop. Some of their old stuff i real­ly res­onate with   ‑gen­e­sis is my favourite band and some of their lyrics are non­sen­si­cal which is fas­ci­nat­ing.  But oth­ers tell a sto­ry and those are my favourite songs typically
Smart, sim­ple, sur­re­al, sym­bol­ist, alle­gor­i­cal, narrative
When the song or lyrics cap­ti­vate a sit­u­a­tion with syn­onyms and metaphors (alex turn­er) or when the lyrics are like real scen­tences, not like poet­ry, and they still fit the song real­ly good (again, car­o­line drama).
Com­plex lyrics
Sto­ry-telling (a song that tells a sto­ry, usu­al­ly as a metaphor)  cut-up method (a method used by william s bur­roughs, where he got loads of ran­dom words, cut them out and jum­bled them up, try­ing to find mean­ing­ful com­bi­na­tions. Used by david bowie among others)
Sto­ry sym­bol­ic imagery political/social
I like any lyrics that take me on a jour­ney and tell a sto­ry  i also like lyrics that tell a good mes­sage or bring up a good point, but are writ­ten in such a way that it can be inter­pret­ted per­son­al­ly by any lis­ten­er and it isn’t preachy.
Exis­ten­tial, thought pro­vok­ing and sentimental
Slow danc­ing in a burn­ing to by john may­er — vague yet heart­felt lyrics. These are easy to res­onate with by not being spe­cif­ic and yet have intense pas­sion   be by hozi­er. Lyrics that include fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ments and ref­er­ences to mythol­o­gy. Talk by hozi­er is anoth­er exam­ple.  A day in the life by the bea­t­les. Song that tell some sort of sto­ry and have a nar­ra­tive of sorts.
Melan­cholic love protest and the chang­ing of time
I’m a suck­er for wit­ty lines par­tic­u­lar­ly when they con­found expec­ta­tions about the nature of liv­ing in rela­tion to death but i guess that’s a bit specific.
Lyrics that are self reflec­tive and self crit­i­cal. Know­ing that you’ve done wrong and admit­ting your mistakes.
Lyrics that mix the real and relat­able with the fan­tas­tic or imag­i­nary. Spi­ral of ants is a good exam­ple, as is blood on the rooftops by genesis.
Maybe the kind that is ambigu­ous and/or spir­i­tu­al. Lyrics that deal with things on a larg­er scale speak more to me than those that revolve around small­er-scale prob­lems and/or conflicts.
I like word­play, lit­er­ary and film references.
Visions of johan­na. Abstract yet mean­ing­ful (not an intrin­sic mean­ing, but one share by the lis­ten­er) and « col­or­ful » lyrics.
I like songs that tell sto­ries about peo­ple, or songs that give you hope
I’ve noticed that i tend to grav­i­tate towards songs that are depres­sive, long­ing amd spir­i­tu­al. Near­ly all the ones i list­ed fall into one of those categories.
I tend to like lyrics that tell some­thing about human nature, or sto­ries that are fan­tas­ti­cal, larg­er than life.   1 : « why do we suf­fer each trace to believe that no race has been grander ? » time table, gen­e­sis  this line is real­ly pro­found to me, because it implies that we as humans are too sure of our­selves and our sig­nif­i­cance. It fits per­fect­ly on the album fox­trot, which opens with « watch­er of the skies », a song about aliens watch­ing over our plan­et.   2 : « no time for roman­tic escape when your fluffy heart is ready to rape » back in nyc, gen­e­sis  this line is in my opin­ion piv­otal to the sto­ry of the lamb lies down on broad­way, which is full of excel­lent lyrics. In the sto­ry, rael has to put aside his iden­ti­ty as the street thug, the rapist, arson­ist, and embrace his roman­tic side, and i think espe­cial­ly today, a lot of men are strug­gling with the same thing — not that we’re all secret­ly rapists and vio­lent gang-mem­bers, but that we all maybe feel a sense of shame in regards to being a man in a mod­ern soci­ety, and that we in this time and age are being shamed for being men, but also for being too roman­tic and sen­ti­men­tal. This line is real­ly pow­er­ful, because rael has this image of him­self as a bad boy, when in the end he real­ly is a roman­tic and emo­tion­al being, which i think is a jour­ney mod­ern men can relate to.
Lyrics that are sim­ple yet pro­found in terms of ways for liv­ing your life
I don’t like songs that near­ly work or rhyme. Prop­er singer/songwriters get it right most of the time !
I real­ly enjoy songs like like a rolling stone and queen jane approx­i­mate­ly and how they put you right in some­body’s life and show how some­body who thinks they’re above every­body else can have a fall from grace and be like those who they’ve sat and laughed at.
Songs that deal with some­thing most songs can’t. Songs that dwell into top­ics that you don’t hear that often in songs. Songs that get per­son­al­ly. If it’s a love song then i want the lyrics to be beau­ti­ful a not typical.
Lyrics that reflect how i’m feel­ing with­out me notic­ing it. But i also like lyrics that sound pow­er­ful­ly elo­quent or make me think about things i nev­er thought about the way the song­writer does.

 

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chanson pour entendre une histoire ? (réponses positives)
Folk drink­ing songs. When I want active­ly to have a laugh. Oth­er­wise, I go for the musi­cal feel of it
For me every song has to have  sto­ry ; but I can’t stand songs where women cry about hope­less love on and on
I always try to focus, some­times though it is just back­ground noise
Heard the George Wal­lace song and need­ed to find out a bit more about this true char­ac­ter from the past and learnt a lot more about racial ten­sions and pol­i­tics of the Deep South and Alaba­ma at the time
« Black Rose » by Thin Lizzy, I love the pas­sion­ate evo­ca­tion of Ire­land, sim­i­lar­ly « One Of Those Days In Eng­land parts 2–10 » by Roy Harp­er for its epic jour­ney through Eng­lish history.
Impos­si­ble ques­tion ! Music and lyrics are so inter­twined. I don’t READ lyrics and I don’t LISTEN to music with the lyrics removed.
She’s leav­ing home- I real­ly like the way it has dif­fer­ent parts to it musi­cal­ly depend­ing on what is hap­pen­ing in the sto­ry. And the back­ing vocals act like the par­ents in the song talk­ing back to the daughter
Again Tan­gled Up In Blue and the entire album (Blood On The Tracks)
Any song off of Quadrophe­nia by The Who (or any con­cept album, with which prog is replete!). Vir­tu­al­ly any Jonathan Coul­ton, Ben Folds, Aman­da Palmer/Dresden Dolls song suc­ceeds in telling rich stories.
All of my pre­vi­ous answers.
Land of Con­fu­sion — Genesis
Car­oli­na Dra­ma again. It’s a short sto­ry with so many angles, and in just a few min­utes you want to know so much more about the story.
Dri­ve By truck­ers song Sink Hole
When I lis­ten to music, I like to use it as an escape from real­i­ty, and any song that has a sto­ry does a real­ly good job of that. This includes that songs 2112 and Sup­per’s Ready
No
Most­ly Hozi­er. Talk, Shrike, Waste­land, Baby!, Be, Cher­ry Wine. Hozier’s lyrics are often very insight­ful and have a lot to be unrav­elled. They’re rarely straight­for­ward and have a cou­ple of inter­pre­ta­tions while at the same time hav­ing some sort of nar­ra­tive.   John May­er also, notably from his Con­tin­u­um album. Wait­ing On the World to Change, Belief, Stop this Train, Slow Danc­ing in a Burn­ing Room, Dream­ing with a Bro­ken Heart.  Pro­gres­sive rock, notably Gen­e­sis. Par­tic­u­lar­ly the Sell­ing Eng­land by the Pound album. Cin­e­ma Show in particular.
Hur­ri­cane Puff the mag­ic dragon
I often return to Raglan Road when wist­ful about a lost or past love, and when feel­ing lonely.
Lily Rose­mary and the Jack of Hearts — it is a com­plex and inter­est­ing sto­ry that you can gain new infor­ma­tion from every time you lis­ten to it.
Sup­pers Ready, song about jour­ney through life and love based on the Bible with inter­est­ing sur­re­al twists
Def­i­nite­ly the pre­vi­ous songs I men­tioned hav­ing a sto­ry, plus songs like Stair­way to Heav­en (Led Zep), Like a Rolling Stone (Dylan) and Suzanne (Cohen). Some­times you lis­ten to songs and the words just sound great togeth­er phono­log­i­cal­ly and with the music. Then you lis­ten to the lyrics and some­times the sto­ry can end up mean­ing some­thing to you.
Rush — 2112 Being a 20-minute long piece, it’s hard to lis­ten to casu­al­ly. But it real­ly shines when you lis­ten to it by itself.  Joni Mitchell — Wood­stock So mov­ing, it’s hard not to pay atten­tion. Often find myself focus on it more than what­ev­er else I’m doing while lis­ten­ing to it.  George Thoro­good — Bad News He may not have writ­ten this one, but it’s still com­pelling. Some­how can relate to the pro­tag­o­nist despite not being a mis­fit like him.
The ones pre­vi­ous­ly listed
Lone­some death of hat­tie car­roll Gives a bleak and shock­ing­ly real­is­tic view on racism in amer­i­can at the time of the civ­il rights movement.
Bal­lad oh Hol­lis brown. Good sto­ry. Depressing.
If I feel sad and want a song that I can con­nect to that also tells a sto­ry. Close To Edge fits this perfectly.
More when show­ing oth­er peo­ple, but one that comes to mind per­son­al­ly is Fair­port Con­ven­tion-Bal­lad of Mat­ty Groves
When I want to lis­ten to a sto­ry, I am more like­ly to lis­ten to con­cept albums because they have more con­tent, such as time by elec­tric light orches­tra or the wall by pink Floyd. I lis­ten to these when I am in a point in my life where I can relate to the main character/protagonist.
I’ll lis­ten to Amer­i­can Idiot straight through for a story
Not off the top of me head
Gal­lows Pole — Led Zep­pelin Janie’s Got A Gun — Aero­smith Jumpin » Jack Flash — The Rolling Stones
Achilles last stand. Amaz­ing lyrics and a pow­er­ful riff to keep it going
The Wall 🙂
When I am sad about miss­ing a per­son or nos­tal­gic for a time in my life, I will lis­ten to a song from that era.  Most tell my own sto­ry, if not an actu­al sto­ry in the song.
Any con­cept album that is good. Usu­al­ly not just one song.
All of the choic­es I made. Depend­ing on my mood depends on the song I lis­ten to. Exam­ple : iron man to get hyped, stair­way to heav­en for a feel good mood, sold my soul if I’m sad
I love the sto­ry of « Red House » by Jimi Hen­drix. The music sounds great and it is an inter­est­ing tale.
The Wall — Pink Floyd, full album. Much like revis­it­ing an old nov­el, it has a great story
The Wall or var­i­ous oth­er Pink Floyd Albums
1. Hal­lowed be thy name- iron maid­en  2.One — Metal­li­ca 3. Novem­ber Rain- Guns N’Roses
Yeah, I think I feel this way when I want to lis­ten to Bat­tle of Ever­more. It has this amaz­ing, high fan­ta­sy feel­ing, to me.
None in spe­cif­ic, just one depend­ing on the cur­rent mood that I’m in that tells a sto­ry that I could relate to
When I first heard of splen­dor and mis­ery, I want­ed to lis­ten to it just for the sto­ry because it was a rap album. I don’t dis­like rap, it’s just not my favourite.  The musi­cal Jesus Christ Super­star also come to mind. I do not like musi­cals, full stop, peri­od… Except Jesus Christ super­star. I want­ed to see this because Judas some what of a « good guy » and Jesus a « bad guy » was extreme­ly inter­est­ing. It’s not the only musi­cal I like because of the sto­ry and because the music absolute­ly SLAPS.
I think a per­fect exam­ple is the bal­lad of Hol­lis brown by Bob Dylan
Songs that i’ve ear­marked before­hand to pay atten­tion to lyrics, I nev­er get a cohe­sive sto­ry on the first go
I’ve lis­tened to « A Day in the Life, » « Stair­way to Heav­en, » and « Mon­ey for Noth­ing, » and « Nor­we­gian Wood » when I want­ed to lis­ten to a sto­ry. I like these songs more than I like some oth­er songs, so i’ll play them more often any­way, but I do think i’ve select­ed them specif­i­cal­ly for their sto­ry val­ue. It’s also impor­tant to note that i’ve skipped these songs because of their sto­ry. If I’m not in the mood for a sto­ry, I just want­ed to get ener­gized and get a quick « hit » of a song, i’ll skip these songs in favour of some­thing with a big­ger punch and that is shorter.
Stair­way to heav­en  Also inter­est­ed in try­ing to under­stand the sto­ry of this women who has every­thing she wants, but still does­n’t know what she tru­ly wants and replaces it with mate­r­i­al goods
Some­times when I’m in a spe­cif­ic mood a cer­tain sto­ry res­onates more than it would have if I was feel­ing anoth­er way
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzger­ald — I was famil­iar with the struc­ture of the sto­ry, but some­times expe­rien­ing is more impor­tant than sim­ply know­ing.  Twi­light of the Thun­der God — Amon Amarth — The Norse mythos is just cool, and the telling of the sto­ry of Thor through melod­ic death met­al even more so.
One is The Tri­al by Pink Floyd. The way the track is sung and how the lyrics delve into mad­ness and anger from the per­spec­tive of dif­fer­ent fam­i­ly mem­bers of the one being accused in the song is just absolute­ly amazing.
The songs pre­vi­ous­ly list­ed. I like dark sto­ries. The band Carach Angren is incred­i­ble at mak­ing songs into sto­ries. Each album they’ve released is a full con­cept album in itself. Dark, lean­ing towards super­nat­ur­al is always bet­ter than a stan­dard, run of the mill sto­ry about nor­mal life.
Stair­way to heaven
Basi­cal­ly The Wall album. It just tells an amaz­ing sto­ry with beau­ti­ful mas­tery of the instruments.
I am writ­ing nov­els, so when I need to be in a cer­tain mood I lis­ten to a song telling that kind of story.
Bob Dylan, U2, Pink Floyd when I’m seek­ing some per­spec­tive. Chris Tom­lin when I need my spir­it refilled. Alice In Chains, Smash­ing Pump­kins, Crack­er, Pre­tenders, and Weez­er when I want to rock out.
Para­noid Joy, The Murlocs.
Hur­ri­cane by Bob Dylan- it nev­er gets bor­ing and it’s an inter­est­ing story
Pin­ball wiz­ard is one that makes me feel good when i get down. Red Bar­che­t­ta reminds  me of my youth. Ram­ble on when I am was fil­ing for divorce.
I like to lis­ten to longer nar­ra­tive songs such as Par­adise by the Dash­board Lights or 2112 when i walk for exercise.
This is more com­mon in full albums rather than songs. Con­cept albums like « The Wall » by Pink Floyd or « Metrop­o­lis Pt. 2 » by Dream The­ater. But also songs like « 2112 » by Rush. The music always takes the fore­front over the sto­ry though.
Rime Of The Ancient Mariner — it’s an epic poem in musi­cal form, telling the sto­ry of Coleridge’s poem with as much grav­i­tas and emo­tion as the poem itself
I active­ly choose all of my music because it inter­ests me. I’m not usu­al­ly a fan of the « shuf­fle » but­ton. If it is a sto­ry album or song, I do want to lis­ten to the sto­ry, but the music itself is more important.
In gen­er­al I will chose and album that has many sto­ries on it, such as Joni Mitchel­l’s Hijera.
All the songs men­tioned before feel like short movies in my head. Inci­dent on 57th Street, in par­tic­u­lar, makes me feel for Span­ish John­ny and think of him as if he were Leonar­do dicaprio in Romeo   Juliet.
Lyin » Eyes. It tells a beau­ti­ful, rec­og­niz­able sto­ry over the sheer lenght of six min­utes that could be deduced in dif­fer­ent ways.
Fifty Mis­sion Cap — Trag­i­cal­ly Hip The Night They Drove Old Dix­ie Down — The Band
I feel like I seek out songs like this when I’m in a cer­tain mood.  The first I remem­ber kin­da seek­ing out is Achilles » Last Stand by Led Zep­pelin. I was super into mythol­o­gy in sixth grade (still am)
Alice’s Restau­rant — Arlo Guthrie  It’s a 20 minute mono­logue book­end­ed by a song
I gen­er­al­ly like con­cept albums for not only the music but also the sto­ry. My favourites would be Queen­sryche’s Oper­a­tion : Mind­crime and Iron Maid­en’s Sev­enth Son of a Sev­enth Son  The sto­ry adds more depth to the music. The musi­cal changes dur­ing cli­mac­tic scenes in the sto­ry adds that change in emo­tion. For exam­ple in Iron Maid­en’s Dance of Death, the sud­den change of tem­po after « they had ascend­ed from hell » adds that atmos­phere mak­ing the sto­ry much more powerful.
Too many times to recount
Rac­ing in the street
Mary Jane’s last dance, I real­ly like that part about « I’m tired of screw­ing up, I’m tired of goin » down I’m tired of myself, I’m tired of this town », it’s my rest­less soul’s words but writ­ten down by Tom Petty.
I’m going to keep putting It’s Hard to Be a Saint
Not a spe­cif­ic song, Bob Dylan is the artist that would first come to mind for this. I think of his lyrics as very lit­er­ary, they tell a sto­ry or have an emo­tion­al arc like a sto­ry would
Sweet Child O » Mine — When I feel in the same nood of that song, I usu­al­ly go hear it.
Black chick, white guy — kid rock : when I was young, it almost felt scan­dalous. Like I was watch­ing a movie I was­n’t sup­posed to.
Atlantic City– want to hear about down on luck
A dan­ish song called Hvid­sten Kro by Lars Lil­holt tells the sto­ry of a dan­ish resis­tance group against the Ger­man inva­sion force dur­ing ww2. The song is about 8 min­utes long and manges to tell the sto­ry of the group as well as car­ry­ing emo­tion through the impor­tant parts.
Eg St James, when the child of a close friend of mine died, this song just seemed to fit the mood and sit­u­a­tion of the ini­tial days & weeks
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Iron Maid­en) The Tal­is­man (Iron Maid­en) Dance of Death (Iron Maid­en)  The fol­low­ing is valid for all three choic­es ! The best way I can describe it, is essen­tial­ly lis­ten­ing to an audio movie with an awe­some sound­track. With a vivid imag­i­na­tion and excel­lent musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, they serve as great sto­ry­telling expe­ri­ences where I basi­cal­ly play out a lit­tle movie inside my head as the song progresses.
I often put on the afore­men­tioned Andy Shauf album « The Neon Sky­line » for the nar­ra­tive that he con­structs through­out the songs.
A Pas­sion Play by Jethro Tull because it con­tains a lot of lit­er­ary or bib­li­cal ref­er­ences and is quite sense and needs focus and atten­tion to « get » what’s going on (in a sto­ry telling sense) .
With songs I had nev­er heard before, which are clear­ly made with sto­ry­telling in mind, and can have one real­ize it through the title alone. Such a song was Gates of Baby­lon, when I was just get­ting start­ed into Rain­bow in my 7 years old. The title made me real­ize what it was talk­ing about, and lov­ing mesopotami­an cul­tures, I was drawn to it.
Once again a lot of the iron maiden/Metallica stuff
Many of Bruce Spring­steen’s albums tell a sto­ry from start to end. For exam­ple, his first album, « Greet­ings From Asbury Park, NJ », tells the sto­ry of a young man learn­ing about the unfa­mil­iar world around him and how he can fit in it with­out los­ing him­self in the process. I make the choice to hear sto­ries this way because music has the abil­i­ty to make small sto­ries feel like thy take place on a much more epic scale.
Con­cept albums like The Wall, Green­dale, Tom­my, Del­tron 3030
11pm, Mr and Mrs ness and fire song by vol­beat because it love the nar­ra­tive of two lovers doomed in their union.
The Last Great Amer­i­can Dynasty Stair­way to Heav­en Ram­ble On All of Ever­more or Folk­lore The Mes­sage (Grand­mas­ter Flash and the Furi­ous Five)
The sev­enth son of a sev­enth son album by iron maid­en. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing theme and the music is real­ly good so I come back to it often
Most of Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan Most of Song to a Seag­ull Joni Mitchell
Rime of the ancient mariner, long sing with great sto­ry that you can just out in and get lost in time. There are so many Maid­en tunes like that though
Back­streets is an excel­lent song about friend­ships, when­ev­er I have friend prob­lems its a go to
The Foun­tain of Lam­neth tells a sto­ry about a man with a dri­ve to explore and find­ing out what’s beyond the moun­tains on the hori­zon, and find­ing out that just arriv­ing there was­n’t the only thing he want­ed to do.
Mar­il­lion’s This Strange Engine, takes the singer through real life expe­ri­ences grow­ing up. Gor­don Light­foot’s Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
Near­ly always
As above

 

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chanson pour entendre une histoire ? (réponses négatives)
In my opin­ion they are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent forms of narrative
Because the melody is essen­tial­ly what attracts me
I just lis­ten to what I lis­ten to, and nar­ra­tive songs I’m rather indif­fer­ent too. There are many nar­ra­tive songs I love, but I don’t real­ly seek them out.
Usu­al­ly I make up my own sto­ries, and use music to inspire me.
For me, music does­n’t need to have a plot, but to keep the lis­ten­er’s inter­est, it will « take you some­where. » In that sense, there is no dif­fer­ence between lis­ten­ing to music with no lyric and being told a story.
Even the very best sto­ry-songs are nec­es­sar­i­ly frag­men­tary and evoca­tive, rather than cohe­sive and con­crete, and when I want nar­ra­tive, I pre­fer coher­ent, con­sis­tent sto­ry­lines with con­crete detail.
I rarely feel like I « want to hear a sto­ry » ; I per­ceive music holis­ti­cal­ly, so I rarely sep­a­rate the lyrics, music, mean­ing, atmos­phere, etc.
I’m more of a music per­son than a lyrics per­son, I usu­al­ly lis­ten for the actu­al music (although lyrics can be great too!)
I’d rather spend time on a sto­ry by watch­ing a movie or read­ing a book.  I’ve already heard most of the sto­ries that I want to hear through music.
Pre­fer to read sto­ries as a whole
I enjoy songs with sto­ries but don’t seek them out specifically
I am not usu­al­ly as invest­ed in the lyrics as the music.
The strength of music real­ly isn’t in telling a nar­ra­tive, the form is real­ly too short. Also from what I know of poet­ry, is it has­n’t been too com­mon to tell a sto­ry with poet­ry (besides epic poet­ry of course, but that is real­ly longer than what we gen­er­al­ly think of when we think of poet­ry). Song lyrics obvi­ous­ly aren’t poet­ry but they are sim­i­lar in that the best song lyrics explore a feel­ing or sin­gle sit­u­a­tion or two, like the poet­ry I know does.
I nev­er thought about doing that.
The music is more impor­tant, and the sto­ry only serves to add weight to it.
No
Nah, if a song does­n’t pull me in on its own it’s prob­s­bly not worth lis­ten­ing to.
I just don’t know so many songs telling sto­ries. And that’s not often what I need from the music I’m lis­ten­ing to.
I reck­on that « active­ly » decid­ing requires con­sci­u­ous­ness and intent. I don’t remem­ber ever want­i­ng to hear a sto­ry (active­ly).
I don’t think the sto­ry­line of a song lyric­wise is sep­a­ra­ble from the whole­ness of the art­work. Sto­ries by them­selves are poems, short sto­ries or nov­els to read.
In mod­ern music I’m gen­er­al­ly dis­trust­ful of the lyrics, since many song writ­ers appear to make up the words for no oth­er rea­son than to have some­thing to sing. I trust the sin­cer­i­ty of the writ­ing in nov­els more.
I’m not too sure what your inten­tion is with the way this ques­tion is word­ed. The lyrics are (for me) an extreme­ly impor­tant com­po­nent of a song. I’d rather not have any lyrics at all rather than poor/lazy/derivative lyrics (music can, of course, do its talk­ing effec­tive­ly with­out lyrics, as in jazz, clas­si­cal, and much of the pro­gres­sive gen­res). How­ev­er, the song as a whole is what makes me want to lis­ten to it and there­fore the music is also extreme­ly impor­tant. I’m unlike­ly to lis­ten to a song just for the sto­ry, and for this rea­son i rarely lis­ten to much of Dylan’s longer ram­bles, even though i recog­nise that they are lyri­cal­ly clever. A song (such as those afore­men­tioned of Dylan’s), that seem almost sole­ly focused on telling a sto­ry, with the music tak­ing a rel­a­tive­ly back­stage and almost inci­den­tal role, will rarely impress me : as with pre­fer­ring no lyrics at all to poor lyrics, so with the music.
When lis­ten­ing to music, I sort of choose what I want to lis­ten to based on my mood.
I think it’s not some­thing I nec­es­sar­i­ly seek out. I like it, but I don’t active­ly look for songs that tell stories(at least in a nar­ra­tive sense). I also real­ly like songs that aren’t that way
Because I am a musi­cian, i nat­u­ral­ly focus more on the instru­ments rather than the lyrics, though I don’t com­plete­ly neglect the lyrics by any means.
I usu­al­ly go to books or TV when specif­i­cal­ly want­i­ng a story.
I lis­ten to songs for the music
When I am choos­ing a song, I choose what I lis­ten to based on my cur­rent mood and what style I want to lis­ten to. The sto­ry is some­thing that accom­pa­nies me along the way.
If I want a sto­ry I would look to oth­er mediums
I lis­ten to music for the sound. There are many songs on my playlists that do have sto­ries, but just as many that don’t.
Just like to lis­ten to Music in General.
I get the sto­ry telling aspect, but it’s not a pri­ma­ry con­cern… I mean, kin­da because I do absolute­ly love con­cept records, so some­times. Nor­mal­ly music is a very emo­tion­al and cathar­tic thing, but when I think about it, I do like songs that tell sto­ries because I can then relate it to my own sto­ry rather than just sep­a­rate emotions.
Usu­al­ly deci­sion is dri­ven by spe­cif­ic mood
Though many songs do tell sto­ries, they are by nature « short ».  I pre­fer my sto­ries longer and more intri­cate than song gen­er­al­ly allows.
I guess I don’t seek out a sto­ry while lis­ten­ing to songs, but if the music is com­pelling or if I have the tune stuck in my head I will lis­ten to it
The pri­ma­ry rea­son I choose to lis­ten to a song is always for it’s music and vocals.
Not real­ly
Not real­ly i dont know why
It nev­er came to mind
I’m usu­al­ly drawn into a song with­in the first few beats. Ya know if it sounds fresh to my ears, some­thing I haven’t heard before nor been rehashed/reused
Nope
I don’t know
I lis­ten to music a lot, and if I have lis­tened to a song before I know the sto­ry, some­times by heart.
No I hon­est­ly can’t
Not real­ly
No
I don’t lis­ten to music specif­i­cal­ly for lyrics — a lot of the music I lis­ten to such as death met­al or screamo often has unin­tel­li­gi­ble lyrics — I lis­ten to music because I love to hear the way instru­ments can come togeth­er to cre­ate a nar­ra­tive with­out words, and the lyrics are sim­ply icing on top of the cake. If I am seek­ing out a sto­ry-like expe­ri­ence, I will read a book, watch­ing a movie, or play a video game.
Just can’t think of any examples
I lis­ten to songs to hear the music. I’m not to con­cerned about the sto­ry but it is always nice to have heard good music and a good story.
I’m more invest­ed in hear­ing the instruments.
No, I can’t
I’m more about the musi­cal­i­ty (instru­ment, vocals) than the poet­ic or sto­ry­telling aspect of a song
I like hear­ing sto­ries in songs but if I’m in the mood for a sto­ry, i’ll usu­al­ly choose to watch a film or read a book instead
No
No
I most­ly lis­ten to music because of how it sounds.
I don’t pur­pose­ly look for a sto­ry, but I like it when I find a sto­ry with­in a song.
Not par­tic­u­lar­ly ; I think of songs as moods rather than sto­ries (though of course the sto­ry ties into the mood), and choose them appropriately.
I rarely active­ly lis­ten to music, thus I would miss parts of the story.
I always lis­ten to songs for both the music and the lyrics. Not just for one or the oth­er. Maybe yel­low Led­bet­ter, war pigs, pin­ball wiz­ard. Not active­ly though
It’s not that impor­tant to me.
I’m more in it for the musi­cal arrange­ment than the lyrics.
I just lis­ten for what I like. Or ran­dom songs.
I’ve nev­er thought « I want to hear a story. »
Lyrics com­ple­ments the music, but the music is the main rea­son how I pick which song to lis­ten to.
I don’t think i’ve ever « want­ed to hear a story »
Not sure I con­scious­ly seek a sto­ry in music
I lis­ten to a lot of music. If its nar­ra­tive focused music I will pay atten­tion (like folk rock, hip-hop, spo­ken word) but i don’t go to music specif­i­cal­ly for stories.
Music is first and fore­most for the music ; the good sto­ry is a nice extra.
Gen­er­al­ly if I want to con­sume a nar­ra­tive, I want it in print­ed prose form. I can usu­al­ly fol­low a sto­ry in oth­er medi­ums, but eg I nev­er feel actu­al­ly engaged with the sto­ry in a film- I am always con­scious that I am watch­ing actors in a film. This is not true of books.
Not real­ly, I lis­ten to songs because of the artists, the sto­ries in the songs make the album.
I dont ever start with want­i­ng to hear a sto­ry and turn to music.  I usu­al­ly lis­ten to music and if a sto­ry song comes on, I enjoy it.
When I lis­ten to music it’s more to enjoy the piece as a whole, so not just the sto­ry aspect but the instru­men­tals and vocals. I’d rather read a book or watch a movie for a sto­ry, though I do enjoy albums and songs with stories.
I don’t typ­i­cal­ly approach songs pure­ly for their lyri­cal con­tent. The sound is what’s more impor­tant than what’s being said (though I still do love a lot of songs for their lyrics too)
Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, I choose music for the instru­men­ta­tion, though I do take notice of the lyrics  When I want a sto­ry, I grav­i­tate towards a book or movie
I pre­fer to read a book for that kind of thing.  Music is more of an escape.
I usu­al­ly pre­fer to read sto­ries than lis­ten to them
I’m not sure… Usu­al­ly when I active­ly choose to lis­ten to a song, I’m more con­cerned with the song as a whole rather than the story.
I’m not com­pelled by the sto­ry itself, but the feel­ings con­veyed through the song and lyrics by the performer.
If I choose to lis­ten to a song it is because I want to hear the song in its entire­ty, and not just that it’s a story.
When decid­ing which song to lis­ten to, the most impor­tant fac­tor is the instrumentation.
If i want to lis­ten to music i dont have any prefenece of weath­er it has a sto­ry to it. If i want to hear a movie i will watch somthing or play a sto­ry game
I like a lot of detail in sto­ries which I don’t think music has.
I don’t think i’ve ever done some­thing because I want to hear a story
No
Since songs tend to only be a few min­utes (even long ones are rarely over 15 — 20 min­utes), the plot would have to be rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward.  If I want a sto­ry, I would much more like­ly look to a tv show, movie, or book. If I active­ly choose to lis­ten to a song, it’s usu­al­ly because I want to hear it again regard­less of whether it tells a story.
It’s not like I don’t like a good sto­ry in song for­mat but it’s not what I make my mind when I lis­ten to a song. When I want to hear music I lis­ten to it because it’s make me calm and it’s a part of me
For me, when it comes to music, lyrics are kind of a sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tion. Espe­cial­ly since in some of the music I like it is hard to fig­ure out the lyrics unless they are written.
I use Spo­ti­fy free ver­sion, so I shuf­fle and don’t lis­ten to spe­cif­ic songs often. Most of the time I active­ly choose songs fit­ting my mood rather than whether or not I want to hear a story.
Music first, lyrics second
For nar­ra­tive sto­ries and such my nat­ur­al incli­na­tion is to get sto­ries from the cin­e­ma. I tend to go to lyrics to feel relat­ed to emotionally/personally or to be creatively/intellectually stimulated.
As a musi­cian, the music attracts me first. If the lyrics are great, it’s a bonus.
The nar­ra­tive of a song can be a huge bonus but its nev­er the main focus, good musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment can ele­vate a sub-par sto­ry but the best sto­ry ever told would­n’t hold my inter­est if it was pack­aged in a song I could­n’t enjoy on some lev­el instrumentally
I often think about the vocals, or a cer­tain line, or a part of the instru­men­tal or beat when putting some­thing on.
I guess I nev­er thought of this. I appre­ci­ate a good sto­ry in every­thing (includ­ing songs) but I always go into a song for the music appre­ci­at­ing the lyrics along the way.
I haven’t thought of it, and I read a lot/don’t have a prob­lem with read­ing   Sur­pris­ing­ly, I’m not big on poetry
I choose the music pri­mar­i­ly based on the instru­ments, but get more inter­est­ed in the sto­ry through­out the song.
Not real­ly.

 

Vous souvenez-vous d’une écoute collective ayant changé votre perception d’une chanson ? Si oui, laquelle ?
Radio dis­cus­sion
« I hate the white man » at kneb­worth 78..because of all of us white men in the audience
Born in the usa, orig­i­nal­ly thought of it as a glo­ry song for flag wav­ing but when lis­tened prop­er­ly realised it was the opposite
Lis­ten­ing to music live changes songs very often. Part­ly because often the songs change.  I’m doing this sur­vey on my phone and i wish i wasn’t
I took my time to under­stand every word and mean­ing of it when lis­ten­ing to amer­i­can pie
I bought the book with all of dylan’s lyrics and when i read it gave me a bet­ter under­stand­ing of all his songs.
Once, i was lis­ten­ing to « close to the edge » by yes when my dad walked in and said, « have you ever noticed that yes lyrics make no sense ? » this answer may be sub­ver­sive, but i hon­est­ly thought some sto­ry­telling was going on behind the music. I was 13.
There is a sub­red­dit for fans of the elec­tric light orches­tra. Elo’s con­cept album « time » is about a man who gets trans­port­ed from 1981 to 2095, and sings a lot about how he wish­es he were back home. I always believed the man got sent back to his own time at the end, but the sub con­sen­sus seems to be he was trapped in 2095 and nev­er saw his lover again. I just find that utter­ly depress­ing and choose to ignore it.
In col­lege in the 90s my friend and i would make trips between hous­ton and austin.  On one trip we lis­tened to the wall all the way through and kind of ana­lyzed the lyrics as we went.
See­ing oasis per­form in the 90s. Noel gal­lagher sang a cov­er of help ! Unac­com­pa­nied with his acoustic gui­tar, and the audi­ence sang along. He sound­ed very frail which seemed to strength­en the mean­ing of the song.
A friend and i were once argu­ing over the mean­ing of a par­tic­u­lar term in a song, and she was right.
Def­i­nite­ly when i start­ed get­ting into hard­er rock/metal. When i was a begin­ner to rock music, i most­ly liked the musi­cal aspect of the songs. Gen­er­al­ly with any kind of song, when i hear styl­is­tic aspects (not sure if that’s the cor­rect term, i mean imagery, per­son­ni­fi­ca­tion, metaphors, etc.) I am inter­est­ed to under­stand the mean­ing behind them. There­fore, i either look up the mean­ings online or i try to lis­ten carefully.
Rock con­certs.  Artists will show back­ground imagery.  Some will intro­duce a song and explain how it came to be and the think­ing behind it.
I watched a visu­al­lized video of sup­per’s ready and it made me real­ly under­stand the lyrics better
I don’t want to tell you. Do your own research.
Lily, rose­mary and the jack of hearts. Lis­tened to the sto­ry with some­one i knew (who loves the song too) and we ana­lyzed the lyrics verse per verse, and how we imag­ined the story.
As a kid my dad would explain to me what alice’s restau­rant and cats in the cra­dle meant.
Not cer­tain on the mean­ing of « col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing » , but many times my under­stand­ing of a song’s nar­a­tive dras­ti­cal­ly changed after read­ing the lyrics with and with­out the music. Also lis­ten­ing to the author dis­cussing the song and his intentions.
Psy­che­del­ic drugs helped me in find­ing a deep­er mean­ing to lyrics
I had to lis­ten to sup­per’s ready quite a few times to grasp the whole story.
Red­dit threads
I had heard sup­per’s ready a few times and thought it was ok. It was not until my grand­pa died that i saw the song as some­thing more.
Lsd played a role, lis­ten­ing to the beach boys pet sounds, spe­cif­ic songs include sloop john b and don’t talk (put your head on my shoul­der). See­ing dead and com­pa­ny live at alpine val­ley in 2018 play stand­ing on the moon was a mov­ing expe­ri­ence when i put the lyrics into the con­text of my own life.
I would’ve said no ; i don’t attend many con­certs and i have trou­ble think­ing freely with all the peo­ple around me.  But *click*, a wild mem­o­ry appeared. Joe jack­son con­cert in 2007. The « before/after » feel about the music is very dif­fer­ent but i don’t think i can put it in words. Just some­thing about watch­ing the band per­form full-heartedly.
Quite often in a live con­cert an artist will explain the inspi­ra­tion of a song — and it’s often quite dif­fer­ent to what you had sur­mised. Words are of course a fair­ly amor­phous vehi­cle of com­mu­ni­ca­tion — but they are per­haps the most coher­ent one that we have ! Songs are of course evoca­tive though, and its nat­ur­al that, when the pre­cise mean­ing of a lyric is unknown, we will fit it into a nar­ra­tive that pleas­es or moves us. Some­times dis­cov­er­ing the real mean­ing of a song is a dis­ap­point­ment because its more banal than what one’s own imag­i­na­tion con­jured up.
Elton John’s Honky Cat. When I first heard the song I did­nt not pay atten­tion to the nar­ra­tive. But when I heard the lyrics I real­ized that I felt some­what the same as the per­son in the song. And thats what changed what I thought about the song. Its about a boy want­i­ng to leave his coun­try town and head to the city to pur­sue his dreams. But oth­ers in his home­town and in the city want­ed him to stay in the coun­try or go back to the country.
Lit­tle Feat in con­cert Clap­ton in concert
I was sit­ting with a bunch of my mates. We were lis­ten­ing to Janie’s Got A Gun, when some­one told me about the lyrics and the sto­ry behind them. I’d nev­er real­ly thought about it before.
Youtube and reddit
As i grew up and had a cou­ple of girl­friends, I could sud­den­ly relate to MANY of the Beat­le’s songs
Read­ing along lyrics Storytellers
Lis­ten­ing to any song with ques­tion­able lyrics makes me pay atten­tion more to them if par­ents are around
Don’t laugh, but watch­ing a female strip­per dance to a song that I knew.  It com­plete­ly changed my under­stand­ing and feel­ing for a song. Not sex­u­al at all.   Just a shift in my per­cep­tion in a pos­i­tive way.  This hap­pened about 3 times.
The amount of times i’ve hear debates on the sto­ry of In the Air Tonight is too high to count
I went to a Styx con­cert and it made me change my view on a lot of their songs because they explained the con­text behind writ­ing them
I often will watch break­downs of songs or albums on youtube which pro­vides insight into songs that I might not catch on my own. An exam­ple would be the Kendrick Lamar album, « Good Kid, Mad City. » That album is extreme­ly nar­ra­tive and very deep requir­ing an analy­sis to ful­ly under­stand. In this case, videos from youtube of peo­ple dis­cussing the album helped me bet­ter under­stand it
I was lis­ten­ing to The Wall by Pink Floyd with a friend and he told me that Com­fort­ably Numb was about drugs and not a doc­tor as i thought it was. Amongst oth­er things he told me wich i dont remember
With friends at a music fes­ti­val (Oxe­gen) and The Verve were head­lin­ing, and they played the Drugs Don’t Work, we all heard it many times since it’s release but there was some­thing about it, that we were hap­py yet me and sev­er­al of my friends were cry­ing at the same time. It was odd but it was­n’t, it all spoke to us in a dif­fer­ent way
I used to hate smells like teen spir­it by nir­vana until I saw the clips from the con­cert my uncle attend­ed, krists bang­ing basslines and kurts awe­some ener­gy made me fall in love with the song
Great Gig in the Sky- Pink Floyd.  I always though this song was kind of sad and about death. I thought the « yelling » in the song was just some­one cry­ing out in the last moments of their life. This was rein­forced by the fact that Time was the pre­vi­ous song, and it talked about death and mor­tal­i­ty.  My grand­ma has a dif­fer­ent thought. She think that the song is a hope­ful one. She said that this was­n’t some­one cry­ing out in pain and fear in their death bed, it was some­one mak­ing on last stand against death. This was some­one com­ing to terms with how they were gong to die, because as the song pro­gress­es, the singer gets pro­gres­sive­ly qui­eter, show­ing them accept­ing their fate.   My grand­ma is also old so maybe she does­n’t want to think of some­one dying in a sad way. Either way I sort of see the song that way now.
My moth­er and I lis­ten to songs togeth­er some­times and we share our inter­pre­ta­tions of the song.
Usu­al­ly hap­py, good expe­ri­ences with friends and fam­i­ly lis­ten­ing to music makes me enjoy the same songs lat­er, and gives me a deep­er love of the song.
Some­one point­ed out to me that « let them eat cake » was a dou­ble enten­dre in Killer Queen
Char­lie brown live at a cold­play con­cert. Damn that song is fuck­ing amaz­ing live
There was one guy that went to my school who real­ly liked this type of music too, he left ear­li­er this year to do online school­ing, but he told me about con­certs that were com­ing up and we’d share songs or artists that we liked with each oth­er. Once, he told me that the song « (Don’t Fear) The Reaper » by Blue Oys­ter Cult was about sui­cide, which I had­n’t thought of before, even though now it seems total­ly obvious.
Some­times lis­ten­ing to the lyrics close­ly or hear­ing some­one else’s opin­ions on them brings out new meanings
My best friend was study­ing under a pro­fes­sor who did his doc­tor­al work for musi­col­o­gy on Pink Floyd. After half a semes­ter or so he and I lis­tened to the Wall togeth­er. The added per­son­al con­text about Roger Waters and the decon­struc­tion of the nar­ra­tive took that album to a new lev­el for me as a piece of musi­cal storytelling.
I remem­ber lis­ten­ing to the song 2112 by Rush with a cou­ple of friends. We were spaced out and hang­ing out, lis­ten­ing to the music. Once the song fin­ished, two of my oth­er friends were dis­cussing the sto­ry behind the song, and I had nev­er under­stood the sto­ry of 2112 until they dis­cussed it. I had always just found myself lost in the music.
The atmos­phere of the room was per­fect, friends were all in the same state of mind as myself.
The influ­ence of drugs and/or alcohol
Get­ting Bet­ter All the Time (Bea­t­les).  The music is uplift­ing as is the title, but the sto­ry is about a man who beats women.  There’s also a line « it could­n’t get much worse, » so it’s not real­ly a pos­i­tive song.   Bur I did­n’t real­ize this until years after hear­ing it for the first time becuase it’s a hap­py sound­ing song
See­ing Get the Led Out play In the Light for the first time. I was in a real­ly dark and bad place, but the lyrics to the song con­nect­ed with me in a way none ever had
Some­thing ille­gal :p
Drugs 😂
I lis­tened to Maxwells sil­ver ham­mer by the Bea­t­les on my own a few times but I nev­er paid atten­tion to the lyrics at and then my friend point­ed out it was about murder
I found out the sto­ry of Fol­som Prison Blues.
I saw Van Halen in con­cert and Sam­my Hagar did a lot of talk­ing about his songs. It helped me to under­stand his lyrics more.
I lis­tened to a song with friends and we just read into the song com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent­ly and had real­ly dif­fer­ent mean­ings. It was gal­lows pole by Led Zep­pelin. To me it was you can always try to make up for a wrong but to some it will nev­er leave you. Also, you can give some­one every­thing you have but one mis­take can lead to you swing­ing on the gal­lows pole. He thought it was just you can’t buy your­self out of death which I agree with as well. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time
Bey­on­cé’s All The Sin­gle Ladies. You lis­ten to the awful pop song and it’s not good. You lis­ten to the same song acousti­cal­ly and the whole song changes. Hope this was­n’t a trash answer
Bruce Spring­steen on Broad­way.  The empha­sis of deliv­ery, the sto­ry fram­ing of the show and the sparse pro­duc­tion of the song « Long Walk Home » put a mid­dling song into a dif­fer­ent context
Watch­ing con­cert record­ings on Youtube when the artist intro­duces their song and
Some­times, I read oth­er peo­ple’s com­ments about songs that give me a new perspective.
My under­stand­ing of some songs has come from com­ment sec­tions of Youtube videos. For exam­ple I thought « Done with Bona­parte » by Mark Knopfler was about false hope and lies until I read the com­ment sec­tion on Youtube.
Most of the time it’s just about a  back­ground sto­ry or hid­den sound. I’m very inter­est­ed in those things, so I always enjoy them.
My par­ents always lis­tened to Van Mor­ri­son when I was younger. I nev­er appre­ci­at­ed him until I got to my late 20s and start­ed lis­ten­ing to him with friends.
See­ing music live always evokes a dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence or con­nec­tion to a song
Every so often, i’ll be lis­ten­ing to some­thing in a group and i’ll react to the way the performer(s) emote(s).   The last time I real­ly remem­ber this was a cou­ple years ago. I saw Future Islands play at a fes­ti­val and have loved them for a while, but was real­ly pulled in by the sto­ry and lyrics live as well.
Many dif­fer­ent acid trips, lis­ten­ing to music on acid is an incred­i­ble experience
There is no one way to inter­pret lyrics. For exam­ple in Iron Maid­en’s Blood Broth­ers, I ini­tial­ly inter­pret­ed it as hope in an author­i­tar­i­an regime (link­ing it to the pre­vi­ous song Brave New World); how­ev­er, by hear­ing anoth­er per­son­’s per­spec­tive through research, I realised that this was about the loss of Steve Har­ris » father.
See­ing Nick Cave in con­cert and his ren­di­tion of Stag­ger Lee.  The emo­tion in his voice and the re-orga­ni­za­tion of the melodies took the song into a dif­fer­ent world
Con­cert- In 2016 I went to the Riv­er Tour for Bruce Spring­steen, and real­ized how much sto­ry telling was in the whole album of the Riv­er, but more impor­tant was the song the Price you Pay, which is angry song, a young man’s rage about society.
At a con­cert, hear­ing rocky ground
The col­lec­tive emo­tion­al aspect of lis­ten­ing with oth­er peo­ple. For me, the col­lec­tive part height­ens the feel­ing expressed in the song and makes them seem deeper
Hear­ing Heroes — David Bowie, hear­ing it while dri­ving with some cousins made me feel some­thing hard to explain but real­ly cool.
Weed, most­ly. Plus hav­ing oth­er peo­ple pas­sion­ate about music to dis­cuss with.
Songs i had­n’t rat­ed have tak­en on a new vital­i­ty in a live set­ting with crowd appreciation
The Jim­my Webb song enti­tled « If You See Me Get­ting Small­er » includes the lyric : « if you see me get­ting small­er, I’m leav­ing. »  I had tra­di­tion­al­ly inter­pret­ed this line as imply­ing emas­cu­la­tion, though when lis­ten­ing to it with an ex-part­ner, she offered her inter­pre­ta­tion that the lyrics implies how some­how visu­al­ly appears small­er as they walk away into the dis­tance.  I agreed with that inter­pre­ta­tion and I now view the line in that way.  I guess that this is not par­tic­u­lar­ly a nar­ra­tive song though.
I lis­tened to the song Under the Grave­yard by Ozzy Osbourne with my girl­friend at the time and the music video and lyrics about his strug­gles and how Sharon helped him real­ly relat­ed the the sit­u­a­tion i was in at the time
If I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in a song or I feel as though I don’t under­stand it as much as I could, then i’ll search up the lyrics on Genius or inter­views with the Artist. A spe­cif­ic song in mind is Back Pack by AJJ.
When I actu­al­ly read the lyrics and I could ful­ly under­stand them
I recent­ly revis­it­ed some nar­ra­tive bob dylan songs (like hur­ri­cane) through a video I saw on youtube explain­ing some of the con­cepts behind his lyrics
Me and m cousins lis­ten­ing to Iron Maid­en albums, Led Zep­pelin, Amorphis.
Mar­i­jua­na, twice at least. In high school a bunch if us went to an acquain­tance house and he played Pink Floyd. There was much dis­cus­sion of what the songs meant to dif­fer­ent peo­ple.  And I almost got to 3rd base with the hot chick with the old­er boyfriend
I saw Danc­ing in the Dark in a movie, and it actu­al­ly drew my atten­tion to the lyrics for the first time .
A friend play­ing me Sgt Pep­pers a month after it came out on an audio­phile stereo very loud. It changed my life.
Hav­ing to trans­late some lyrics to friends who don’t speak Eng­lish and explain­ing the mean­ing has made me under­stand them better.
Peter Gabriel — Human Right Tour 1988, his ver­sion of In Your Eyes was such a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of human­i­ty.  Took the song from a 5 minute osten­si­ble love song to a 12 minute com­mu­nal union for a great cause.
While get­ting old­er, i’ve start­ed to con­cen­trate more on the lyrics on side of the instruments
« Luka » by Suzanne Vega — I had nev­er list­ed close­ly to the lyrics, and then a friend point­ed out that the song was about child abuse.
Local Folk Club

 

Vous souvenez-vous d’une écoute collective ayant changé votre perception d’une chanson ? Si non, pourquoi ?
Most of the music I lis­ten too is when I am alone, so it’s not real­ly influ­enced by others
I haven’t been to many con­certs where songs like that are played
No
No
I can­not. Open to pret­ty much anything
Not enough col­lec­tive experiences.
No
No
No
Noth­ing comes to mind
The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple who lis­ten to music with me don’t real­ly under­stand or speak Eng­lish well enough to spark a dis­cus­sion about a song’s lyrics (and most of the music I lis­ten to is in English)
I usu­al­ly lis­ten to music alone, when I’m with friends we don’t pay atten­tion much
N/A
No
I like enjoy­ing music on my own.
I’m not sure. I think I’m just a high­ly intro­spec­tive and intro­vert­ed per­son. It’s eas­i­er for me to find mean­ing alone with my head­phones in.
N/a
I rolled into the world of rock music and when that hap­pened I was inter­est­ed in dis­sect­ing songs from the start
Not real­ly, no
No
Don’t real­ly get the chance to lis­ten to the music I enjoy with friends
I lis­ten to music to hear the mag­ic of the instru­ments and the lyrics and sto­ries always take the back­seat. I don’t ana­lyze the lyrics for deep­er mean­ing, I take every­thing on a basic lev­el. That’s why I lis­ten to Led Zep­pelin and not Bob Dylan.
I just haven’t real­ly exclu­sive­ly lis­tened to music with friends or family.
Not real­ly
Just haven’t.
No.
No
Unless at a con­cert, music is most­ly a per­son­al experience
No
I’ve only been to one con­cert and i usu­al­ly lis­ten to music alone.
Maybe I just haven’t had my moment yet. We’ll see.
I can’t
None comes to mind.
I haven’t been to any concerts.
I most­ly lis­ten to music on my own, and I usu­al­ly find that music means some­thing dif­fer­ent to every­one regard­less of lyrics. I’ve nev­er had any­one just ana­lyze the lyrics for me to inter­pret them rad­i­cal­ly different.
I don’t tend to share my music with others
I don’t usu­al­ly wor­ry about inter­pre­ta­tion of the lyrics.
Nor­mal­ly will look into nar­ra­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of music as i lis­ten to it
I have nev­er been to a con­cert except as a small child, and while I lis­ten to music with a friend reg­u­lar­ly, this has nev­er happened.
I don’t real­ly do col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences.  And watch­ing a band per­form a song does­n’t help with under­stand­ing the narrative.
I guess I don’t lis­ten to that much music with oth­er people.
I haven’t been to many con­certs where those types of songs are played, nor have I had such moments as the envi­ron­ment I lis­ten to music in nev­er real­ly changes much.
I do that on my own
?
Maybe if some­one was to com­ment on the mean­ing of lyrics ?  Noth­ing stands out specif­i­cal­ly about col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing and nar­ra­tive lyrics
Not real­ly.
Not real­ly. Sor­ry for a lack­lus­ter answer.
I don’t have many friends who share my tastes in music, so most of my lis­ten­ing is done alone
I think most songs are open to inter­pre­ta­tion from the lis­ten­er, and being ulti­mate­ly opin­ion, I believe no opin­ion or inter­pre­ta­tion incor­rect regard­less of author intent.
In those sorts of set­tings, it’s more social and less focused on deep­er mean­ings etc.
Because I most­ly real­ize such musi­cal notions alone, need­ing room to free my mind.
Because my mem­o­ry is pret­ty bad in this regard. There prob­a­bly were many moments that I can’t pin­point on my own.
I usu­al­ly lis­ten to music alone
No
That would have been 20 years ago almost
No
I was famil­iar with the mate­r­i­al before­hand and had done research on it prior
None of my friends were inter­est­ed in a lot of the music I like, so col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences nev­er happened
Because I usu­al­ly under­stand bet­ter the words and the music when I’m alone
No
Don’t lis­ten to music with friends because we have very dif­fer­ent music tastes.
I don’t often go to con­certs and I only talk about the music I like with a cou­ple of friends
Not real­ly.
I already had a per­cep­tion of the songs locked in.
Just nev­er happened
Rarely dis­cuss collectively
I don’t gen­er­al­ly like nar­ra­tive songs
While shar­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing music with oth­ers is fan­tas­tic I feel per­cep­tion and under­stand­ing are deeply personal.
Lis­ten­ing to music alone allows to form a stronger bond it.
I’m not real­ly the type of per­son to lis­ten to music with oth­er peo­ple, most peo­ple I know are into dif­fer­ent types of music
Haven’t had enough col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences and the ones I had focus on the music or on songs I’m unfa­mil­iar with
My friends don’t like my music
I can’t remem­ber the last time i had a col­lec­tive lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence but it’s like­ly my per­cep­tions would change with oth­ers » opinions.
Maybe because I, frankly, do not know many peo­ple who also care as much about music and lyrics.
Usu­al­ly lis­ten to music by myself
My peers don’t often dis­cov­er new music together.
I think col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences which have changed or brought some­thing new to how I feel about a song have more to do with the over­all atmos­phere of the song than the storyline.
No.
Vous souvenez-vous d’une nouvelle écoute individuelle ayant changé votre perception d’une chanson ? Si oui, laquelle ?
Read­ing the book­let while lis­ten­ing to the song. Most of the times, lyrics for me are just part of the melody. I have to stop and see the lyrics to register
The mood that I was in when listening
Most times i listen
Enjoyed the song Will­in with won­der­ful gui­tar work but did not realise what the song was about real­ly until I lis­tened prop­er­ly to the lyrics
The sheer emo­tion of the lyri­cal and musi­cal expe­ri­ence, such as « Tales From Topo­graph­ic Oceans » by Yes
Yes. It made me under­stand the song deep­er. Made me real­ize how much more fuller it is
A song enhanc­ing already present emo­tions or help­ing in a deci­sion process.
More often than not, it is inde­pen­dent research or analy­sis that leads me to under­stand the nar­ra­tives behind the songs. For exam­ple, « Here Comes the Flood » by Peter Gabriel. The song itself has a bit of mag­i­cal real­ism (a flood of hon­est thought wash­es over the earth), and I did­n’t under­stand what Peter was dri­ving at until I looked up the lyrics and his moti­va­tion for writ­ing the song.
I first heard the Yes song « Close to the Edge » right after my grand­moth­er died. I lat­er read that the end­ing of the song is based on a dreaml lead singer Jon Ander­son had about life after death. I was­n’t able to lis­ten to the song for a long time after that because the song became con­flate with death for me.  A few years lat­er I lis­tened to the Yes song « Star­ship Troop­er », with its lyrics about the secrets of life and old wis­dom passed through gen­er­a­tions, on the way home from my grand­fa­ther’s funer­al. I still can’t lis­ten to that song with­out think­ing of my grand­fa­ther’s death — which is iron­ic, because the song is very life-affirming.
This hap­pens all the time real­ly.  I like to some­times just sit and lis­ten to music.  No drugs or oth­er stim­uli real­ly, just lis­ten.  Real­ly lets the mind wan­der.  That com­bined with a deep love of lyrics leads to all kinds of inspec­tion into meaning.
I spent most of my child­hood lis­ten­ing to lyrics meant for adults (baby boom age,) so I often hear a song from my child­hood and real­ize what it’s meant all along…
This hap­pens fre­quent­ly with good music. Songs are always a prod­uct of inter­ac­tion between object and sub­ject, so as I change so too do songs » mean­ings change.
Head­phones and con­cen­tra­tion with no dis­trac­tions.  Deci­pher­ing lyrics bet­ter to grasp pos­si­ble other/multiple meanings.
Same as last answer
When you’re alone you can focus entire­ly on a song.
Life expe­ri­ences, notably loss and love. These are often things that can’t be expe­ri­enced sec­ond­hand and only dur­ing a repeat­ed lis­ten­ing after going through thoose sit­u­a­tions did I appre­ci­ate the song fully.
The grad­ual under­stand­ing of Amer­i­can pie
I think it depends a lot on mood — some­times you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­posed to a cer­tain feel­ing a song elic­its and that can focus atten­tion on the lyrics and there­fore elu­ci­date the nar­ra­tive. I think music is par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive at this (I say this as a lover of poet­ry). Auden thought music was what poet­ry should aspire to be.
Sign on the Win­dow by Bob Dylan — lis­ten­ing to the song after learn­ing about the con­text of his life at the time made it more sad
Lis­ten­ing to David Bowie’s Five Years on a cross-coun­try flight with noth­ing else to do opened up how beau­ti­ful and plain­tive the song’s mes­sage about the end of the world is.
Just that lis­ten­ing alone is where you can enjoy the song com­plete­ly and that’s where all your atten­tion is in the moment. Often­times when music is play­ing amongst a group of peo­ple it is for the pur­pose of being in the back­ground and con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er peo­ple is the main thing.
Some­times i’ll hear a song many times before it « clicks » or I real­ize a mis­heard or mis­un­der­stood line that gives me a new perspective.
Bruce Spring­steen — Born in the USA After lis­ten­ing close­ly and read­ing the lyrics, I came to under­stand that it was­n’t meant to patri­ot­ic, but to illus­trate the hard­ships vet­er­ans face after return­ing from war.
Some­times the phys­i­cal con­text sur­round­ing me might influ­ence the way I inter­pret the song.
Expe­ri­enc­ing music under the influ­ence of cannabis often changes the way I per­ceive it.
Once again, psy­che­delics drugs.
I did­n’t real­ize that Turn of the Cen­tu­ry had a sto­ry behind it at first. Look­ing up the lyrics after­wards changed the song for me entire­ly. The next time I lis­tened I knew I was hear­ing the sto­ry of Roan and his wife.
I learnt more about the back­ground of the song and looked at it from a dif­fer­ent point of view
Lis­ten hard­er and relate to myself
I can’t remem­ber exactly.
Many times, some­times look­ing at lyrics in the lin­er notes if lps when lis­ten­ing to songs changes your under­stand­ing of a piece.
Absolute­ly ! Every time i lis­ten to any old song it tells me some­thing i had­n’t noticed before. Lily allen’s « the fear » was just some ran­dom track on the radio until some ded­i­cat­ed listening.
Often you might lis­ten to a song for years, know­ing the lyrics by heart but not giv­ing them that  much extra thought and then all of a sud­den (and I think that the key word is Soli­tary lis­ten­ing) some hid­den mean­ings come togeth­er and give the song that you thought you knew a whole new per­spec­tive. Some­times lis­ten­ing-enhanc­ing chem­i­cals might do their part. I remem­ber lis­ten­ing to « The Park » by Uri­ah Heep for a hun­dreth  time alone in the dark lying on the floor when I sud­den­ly final­ly real­ized sec­onds before the fourth verse that it was depict­ing the morn­ing of the Hiroshi­ma bomb­ing (hav­ing until then under­stood the whole song as an anti-war hymn only in general).
It does­n’t help much to lis­ten to music as a mere back­ground to anoth­er activ­i­ty. It’s almost sac­ri­le­gious per­haps, to treat a work of art that a musi­cian has often poured heart and soul into, in such a cur­so­ry man­ner, although of course the pop hit machine man­u­fac­tures rel­a­tive­ly (and i choose the word delib­er­ate­ly, because some of it is good) sim­plis­tic music that could almost be engi­neered for such pur­pos­es.  To be frank, lis­ten­ing in an undis­turbed envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly in a dark­ened room, and giv­ing the music 100% of one’s atten­tion, or as near as pos­si­ble, opens the mind and soul to the music, and to the mind and soul of the artist or artists who cre­at­ed it. Small quan­ti­ties of alco­hol or cannabis are a use­ful aid in this, per­haps because they help to release the grip of con­ven­tion­al wis­dom and leave the mind more open to accept the music with­out pre­con­ceived bias, includ­ing the bias of one’s own per­cep­tions from ear­li­er acquain­tances with the music.
Most of the lis­ten­ing I do is alone in an iso­lat­ed envi­ron­ment. Sell­ing Eng­land by the pound and hemi­spheres by rush are exam­ples of albums that I appre­ci­at­ed a lot more when I focused on the music alone.
The song rob­bers, I orig­i­nal­ly thought was­n’t too spe­cial, but after hear­ing the singer’s thoughts behind the lyrics and watch­ing the music video, I liked it a whole lot more and under­stood what he was going for
I don’t know why it hap­pened. I was in the bus and lis­ten­ing to Stair­way To Heav­en and I sim­ply lis­tened to lyrics.
Instead of just lis­ten­ing when I do home­work, lis­ten­ing to actu­al­ly listen
Bore­dom and curiosity
Lis­ten­ing to music as an adult that I first heard as a child has often made me more aware of under­ly­ing nar­ra­tives or themes that went over my head when I was younger.
Lis­ten­ing more carefully
I guess I just was in a dif­fer­ent state of mind
I did a 2 week iso­la­tion hike in Hawaii.  Toward the end, I rent­ed a car and turned in the radio. Ram­ble On by Led Zep­pelin. I heard the song a mil­lion times, but this time it was dif­fer­ent. It was if I nev­er heard it before.  It was fas­ci­nat­ing!!!!  This was not a lyri­cal shift, but rather an entire shift .  Anoth­er was Storms by Fleet­wood Mac.  I had heard the song but it nev­er res­onat­ed with me until I start­ed med­i­tat­ing.   I start­ed to remem­ber my past lives.  I lis­tened to the song again  and a huge wave hit me!!!  I start­ed to weep
When I ful­ly give my atten­tion I notice instru­ments that i’ve nev­er heard before. I also appre­ci­ate how instru­ments flow with one anoth­er and com­pli­ment each other
It brings back mem­o­ries of those conversations
The first time I under­stood polit­i­cal con­text in a song was Cre­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival’s For­tu­nate Son. I was learn­ing about the Viet­nam War for the first time, and it was the first time I real­ized music could have a sto­ry along with a sound
Local H recent­ly played in its entire­ty their record What­ev­er Hap­pened to PJ Soles ? And, in engag­ing with oth­er lis­ten­ers, I did a lot more think­ing about the record, the story/concept it was try­ing to get across, and I was able to lis­ten to it with fresh ears one night a cou­ple of weeks ago.
Pay­ing atten­tion to the lyrics of many songs while I’m alone makes me think about the song and mean­ing behind it.
I have a ten­den­cy to not pay clos­er atten­tion to lyrics on first lis­ten­ing of a song. Some­times, after being « famil­iar » with a song, I will lis­ten close­ly to the lyrics and dis­cov­er a new meaning.
Truth­ful­ly tak­ing psy­che­del­ic drugs has made me lis­ten and appre­ci­ate music in a whole new way. Some­times lis­ten­ing to songs make me per­ceive them in a whole new light
When I lis­ten to music alone and real­ly focus on the lyrics I will often catch a lyric that I missed before or relate to it in a dif­fer­ent way.
Lis­ten­ing to the sto­ry again made me real­ize stuff I had missed before
Just notic­ing var­i­ous nuances in the lyrics I had missed before
Know­ing what i wrote in ques­tion 33. All the album made sense,
Echoes- Pink Floyd, real­ly hard hit­ting truths of life are embed­ded in that song
It was main­ly a mat­ter of pay­ing atten­tion to details and symbolisms
All the time ! I grew up with a lot of the music I lis­ten to. As a result of grow­ing up, I have a wider field of expe­ri­ences to apply to what I lis­ten to. Songs and art are reflec­tive of human expe­ri­ence, and I think it’s much eas­i­er to draw mean­ing from them if you’ve had an applic­a­ble experience.
The Rain Song.    Real­ly felt down one time while work­ing so stuck it on, and it start­ed to rain. I decid­ed to pull over switch off the engine and just lis­ten to the lyrics, think of how I’d work on mak­ing things bet­ter with my girl­friend at the time.
It mas­sive­ly depends on my mood. My mood can real­ly impact my response to a song
Some­times tak­ing time to focus on a song will change my inter­pre­ta­tion of it.
When I’m alone, espe­cial­ly in nature, songs by usu­al­ly solo artists make me feel like they’re talk­ing direct­ly to me, and makes the song deeper
Actu­al­ly lis­ten­ing to/reading the lyrics
Noth­ing else mat­ters. Sat down and looked at the lyrics while listening
I lis­ten to most of music alone so any dis­cov­er­ies I make I do by myself, maybe a lit­tle help from my father or step-grand­fa­ther since they also like the music, but nor­mal­ly not. For most songs, I look up the lyrics and see what peo­ple say about them, which is I how I get most of the his­tor­i­cal con­text. But, by myself, i’ve dis­cov­ered that the Abbey Road album tells the sto­ry of the Bea­t­les. It starts with « Come Togeth­er » which could be inter­pret­ed as John talk­ing about each Bea­t­le in one of the stan­zas, and it’s lit­er­al­ly them « com­ing togeth­er » and then on the last song « The End » being about the end of the Bea­t­les. Each Bea­t­le has their own solo, rep­re­sent­ing their four solo careers after the Bea­t­les and ends with « The love take is equal to the love you make » which is what the Bea­t­les were about.
Return­ing to a few led Zep­pelin songs after a cou­ple years, with a new appre­ci­a­tion of music in general
The oth­er day I was lis­ten­ing to Tom­my by The Who for the sec­ond time and I paid more atten­tion to the lyrics than the first time. I picked up parts of the sto­ry that I did­n’t before
Redis­cov­er­ing music I heard in pass­ing as a child can do this. The spe­cif­ic event that comes to mind is relis­ten­ing to Mr. Roboto in the con­text of Kil­roy Was Here
Good­bye Blue Sky — Pink Floyd. I’ve heard that song grow­ing up and just thought it sound­ed nice, but a soli­tary lis­ten made me ful­ly aware of the lyrics and what they mean/advocate for.
Just being alone with my thoughts always gives me a bet­ter abil­i­ty to under­stand and ana­lyze the con­cepts of the lyrics
Usu­al­ly it just hap­pens to be what­ev­er else is going on in my life. If there is a major event hap­pen­ing, or a major feel­ing I’m expe­ri­enc­ing, I will always relate those songs direct­ly to those expe­ri­ences and lis­ten­ing to them trans­ports me back to that head­space instantly.
Some­thing ille­gal :p
Lis­ten­ing to songs now with near­ly six decades of expe­ri­ence seems to near­ly always give a new per­spec­tive on the lyrics com­pared to when I heard and enjoyed them in my teens and 20s.
Look­ing up the mean­ing of the song changed my per­spec­tive on it
Lis­ten­ing more to the lyrics
Lis­ten­ing to lyrics while read­ing them gives a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of what the mes­sage of the song is
Gold­fish by Roy Harp­er- I was sit­ting by the riv­er and I was just think­ing about how there’s a lot more than just him singing about dif­fer­ent ani­mals and more like he’s address­ing one person
I real­ized that the lyrics were very dif­fer­ent that I had thought.
The first time I lis­tened to Gen­e­sis « Sell­ing Eng­land by the Pound » and real­ly dig into the lyrics. I enjoy read­ing about songs as I lis­ten to them and it fur­ther grew my love for the music.
When I lis­tened to the discog­ra­phy of Led Zep­pelin over about a week I dis­cov­ered new songs I liked, that also pro­vid­ed insights to the songs I had already lis­tened to for a long time, by show­ing me the sim­i­lar­i­ties and run­ning themes through their music.
Late-night lis­tens in bed with head­phones are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from lis­ten­ing to them in the car or at work ; you can devote full atten­tion to the sound in your ears and it allows you to lis­ten much more closely.
I’ve been active­ly lis­ten­ing to music since mid­dle school. I think as I grew old­er I was bet­ter equipped to grasp more lyrics and stories.
Look­ing up lyrics and read­ing them as opposed to lis­ten­ing to them. Some­thing about read­ing a lyric can change how I look at cer­tain songs
See 36
The amount of focus.
Repeat lis­ten­ings
I sup­pose so, but usu­al­ly it is because I learned some­thing new about the artist or the song in between listening.
You start to lis­ten to the song from a dif­fer­ent perspective.
Some­times being alone with head­phones enhances the lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. When there are less dis­trac­tions it gives to more oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear the music.
Chang­ing cir­cum­stances in my own life make me under­stand or con­nect to lyrics differently
This hap­pens a lot to me. I’ll go over songs and find new mean­ing or just real­ize dif­fer­ent mean­ings from my own changed cir­cum­stances and life experiences.
Under­stand­ing the musi cmore can point to the nar­ra­tive clear­er over time.
The first time I lis­ten to a song, I lis­ten for the music and not the words. When I like the song, then on sec­ond lis­ten I try to dis­sect the lyrics. Why would I analyse lyrics for a song I don’t enjoy ?
Many hours I have spent analysing and inter­pret­ing song lyrics. Amer­i­can Pie was a huge plea­sure to inter­pret and cor­re­late with his­tor­i­cal events.
The first time I lis­tened seri­ous­ly to Jun­gle­land I was blown away by how pow­er­ful the sto­ry was.
This usu­al­ly hap­pens with mis­un­der­stood imagery or mis­heard lyrics that final­ly clicks lat­er on.
Alot of teenage feel­ings going on inside me and I heard « I’m going down » by Bruce. I had heard it many times before but this time I lis­tened to the lyrics and could real­ly feel it, you know ? It’s like when all the pieces of a puz­zle comes togeth­er and it forms a pic­ture right infront of you.
When I lis­tened to the album Spar­ta­cus again I was more focused on the music, and in turn grew to appre­ci­ate it more.
Just read­ing lyrics and listening.
Paint It Black (The Rolling Stones) — one time lis­ten­ing to it and it final­ly clicked that the song is describ­ing a funeral.
Real­ly focus­ing sole­ly on the lyrics. A lot of times I lis­ten to songs and won’t ful­ly pick up on the lyrics until I do so inten­tion­al­ly because I get caught up in the instrumentals
I can’t think of a spe­cif­ic exam­ple, but I know there are sev­er­al songs in this nar­ra­tive style that I heard at one age and made assump­tions about the lyrics, and then heard at an old­er age and inter­pret­ed dif­fer­ent­ly — either because of per­son­al expe­ri­ences, edu­ca­tion, hav­ing heard an anec­dote about the artist, or a better/different under­stand­ing of song writ­ing and interpretation
In my life — The bea­t­les, made me real­ize how much I miss some rel­a­tives and want them back in my life because I love them a lot.
Farewell Trans­mis­sion by Songs : Ohia. The more I lis­tened to the phras­ing and the cadence of his voice, the more I devel­oped an emo­tion­al attach­ment to the lyrics.
Main­ly more his­tor­i­cal back­ground knowl­edge for tra­di­tion­al Irish and Scot­tish songs. Loch Lomond comes to mind
When by myself I can take in lyrics better.
The first time, maybe even cou­ple of times, i can’t tell the lyrics apart from the music. Only spe­cif­ic pieces. If i enjoy the song i will usu­al­ly even­tu­al­ly look up the lyrics and some­times it will open up anoth­er dimen­sion to the song for me.
Lis­ten­ing prop­er­ly to the lyrics, rather than hear­ing them in the back­ground while doing some­thing else. Often this is the case when I’m run­ning or work­ing out and my mind can focus on what I’m hear­ing, rather than if i’ve music play­ing while i’m work­ing and my atten­tion is all on the work.
I think lis­ten­ing to songs while read­ing the lyrics is incred­i­bly impor­tant, espe­cial­ly in songs that tell sto­ries. Read­ing the words allows you to process them in a dif­fer­ent way, either as a sto­ry or as poetry.
Once again, this is not real­ly a nar­ra­tive song, but I recent­ly came around to Bob Dylan’s « Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 » when I began to inter­pret the « they’ll stone you when… » vers­es in the Bib­li­cal sense of the term ston­ing.  It is prob­a­bly obvi­ous to most lis­ten­ers, but my real­iza­tion ele­vate the song from just a goof-off to some­thing that I now respect in a more poet­ic sense.
Per­son­al mean­ing can change over time as the per­son and their sit­u­a­tion changes.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzger­ald because I was famil­iar with the melody etc but had­n’t real­ly focused on the details of the sto­ry it tells. Its con­text makes the lament­ing melody more poignant.
Lis­ten­ing just on my own makes me be able to under­stand abstrac­tions and char­ac­ters with myself, with the help of my inner voice in order to mate­ri­al­ize such ideas, or at least bring them into this world.
Some­times when you lis­ten to the lyrics and think about the mean­ing you realise that the song is deep­er than you first thought
On occa­sion, per­haps when I’m in a dif­fer­ent mind­set, I might think about lyrics in a dif­fer­ent way than I oth­er­wise would, espe­cial­ly if I’m alone and focus­ing on them
I felt a deep con­nec­tion to One — Metal­li­ca after my father died after 4 years of ALS. Lyrics about a man who had his body tak­en away from him and wish­ing he could just die prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with that.
Just when i lis­tened more care­ful­ly to the lyrics.
Real­ly focus­ing on the song helped me bet­ter under­stand the narrative.
Tastes, under­stand­ing, and appre­ci­a­tion change over time
I look at albums as audio movies. When lis­ten­ing to an album in full it allows you to step inside the artists heads.
Lis­ten­ing to the lyrics in entirety..Realizing the song is actu­al­ly sad and not happy
Because when I’m in soli­tary I focus on every­thing in the song : the words, the har­mo­ny, the struc­ture and so on…
In a peri­od in which I lis­tened to queen non-stop, I came to appre­ci­ate more some of their sto­ry-telling songs (first three albums mostly)
Hal­lowed be thy name (Iron Maid­en) per­son­al issue at the time
Dif­fer­ent musi­cal arrange­ments can real­ly change the mean­ing, or make the mean­ing clear­er e.g. A hap­py, stan­dard-sound­ing song reworked as an angry dis­so­nant one
Reflect­ing on the lyrics Mak­ing com­par­isons to my own life Grow­ing older
Can’t think if spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion but this has hap­pened numer­ous times when re lis­ten­ing to songs_albums
I enjoyed the song a lot more
Some­times I lis­ten to music with­out know­ing the lyrics and, not being a native Eng­lish speak­er, often I have to look them up and final­ly under­stand the songs I have already lis­tened to. When I do, most times I appre­ci­ate them more because I get what the artist was try­ing to express.
Lis­ten­ing to songs while doing home­work or watch­ing a game is dif­fer­ent than when I lis­ten while run­ning or in a car ride.  The lat­ter expe­ri­ences give me an oppor­tu­ni­ty  to focus more on the lyrics and what the artist is actu­al­ly saying
I was look­ing up what j’ar­rive Acadie, meant. After read­ing the lyrics I real­ized what the sto­ry was. Made me love it more.   What hurt the most When the peo­ple there said « You bet­ter keep movin » on   I always want to tell for­eign­ers that I feel that way too, when i’ve been told to go back where I came from and I’m Indige­nous American.
Cry­ing after hear­ing Odet­ta sing Waterboy

 

Vous souvenez-vous d’une nouvelle écoute individuelle ayant changé votre perception d’une chanson ? Si non, pourquoi ?
Nope
No
No
I, in most cas­es, lis­ten to music alone so a « fresh soli­tary lis­ten » is more of an « aver­age every­day lis­ten » to me.  Apart from that, I don’t usu­al­ly try to ana­lyze lyrics.
No
No
I don’t under­stand your question
It prob­a­bly hap­pened, but I just can’t think of any examples.
I don’t think 1 thing can nec­es­sar­i­ly change my per­cep­tion of some­thing that is based on expe­ri­ence. Which I believe music is some­thing expe­ri­en­tial, so it’s not just 1 song, it’s a col­lec­tive of experiences
No
If I under­stood the nar­ra­tive of a song while lis­ten­ing with friends, I under­stood it at the same lev­el by myself.
Not real­ly
Just did­n’t I guess.
No.
No
I like lis­ten­ing to these types of songs and then for­mu­late what it is about right after. The rain song is a great one where it took me a lit­tle while to lay my whole groundwork
Noth­ing comes to mind.
No
Hon­est­ly I can’t remem­ber any — I tend to stick to my orig­i­nal under­stand­ing of music and none jump out as any different
I don’t usu­al­ly wor­ry about inter­pre­ta­tion of the lyrics.
I tend to try and fig­ure out the song the first time I hear it. Whether I’m right or wrong, it’s unusu­al that my under­stand­ing changes on its own.
No.
No
No
Most of my music lis­ten­ing is already of a soli­tary nature so it’s hard apply myself to this question.
No
Stud­ied it already
In my expe­ri­ence, a nar­ra­tive song will either be : 1) sim­ple enough that the mean­ing can’t real­ly be mis­un­der­stood or 2) eso­teric enough that it can’t be well under­stood with oth­er resources/discussions
Can’t recall
No thoughts, head emp­ty. My under­stand­ings of songs are usu­al­ly the emo­tions I get from the song, less so with the sto­ry line. The mean­ing I glean from a song typ­i­cal­ly does not change with fresh lis­tens ; I lis­ten one time and my opin­ion is fair­ly static.
Some­times I missed a cou­ple words here and there.
No
I’m not smart enough to dis­sect song lyrics usu­al­ly (unless its some­thing sim­pler like Bil­ly Joel). I learn about the mean­ing or nar­ra­tive of songs through look­ing it up most of the time.
One lis­ten­ing can’t get me deep enough in the nar­ra­tive, it takes a few lis­ten­ing times more
I think that once I had got­ten a first impres­sion of a song, it was not easy for me to think of it differently.

 

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chanson dont l’histoire ou les paroles vous ont dérangé. Si oui, laquelle ?
Most rap
I don’t like female singers com­plain­ing about being left by boyfriends.  They often sound pathet­ic.  Won­der­ful main­ly acoustic excep­tions exist, like Eva Cas­sidy, where beau­ti­ful lyrics put you into a field, or an imag­i­nary landscape
Sign of the times Prince, pret­ty blunt and to the point once you get your head around all the slang of what’s hap­pen­ing to the broth­er in the song
Mas­ters of War Bob Dylan. Sub­ject true but lyric style & vit­ri­ol dis­turbed me
« For­bid­den Fruit » by Roy Harp­er, on the sur­face a pret­ty lul­la­by but the lyrics betray an ugli­ness regard­ing child abuse.
Rape me by nir­vana was shock­ing when i first heard it
Stan
All kinds of (ger­man) rap music or such. I usu­al­ly don’t lis­ten to these songs again so I can’t remem­ber them.
The heart­break­ing­ly beau­ti­ful song « Dri­ve Home » by Steven Wil­son. I used to lis­ten to this song ad infini­tum until I saw the music video, which clar­i­fied some of the sto­ry behind the song — which is about a man who feels guilt about his part­ner’s death after a car acci­dent. The song is so sad and the video so poignant that I rarely lis­ten to it now.
Pret­ty much any song about death or the pas­sage of time. Such as « Time » by Alan Par­sons Project or « Time » by Pink Floyd.
I men­tioned it regard­ing Sniper. On the same album, he had a song called Woman Child which was about ille­gal abor­tions.  I did­n’t learn to appre­ci­ate Frank Zap­pa or Cap­tain Beef­heart until much lat­er in life, and even then, it’s not exact­ly some­thing I will lis­ten to in the background.
« Jum­bo Go Away » by Frank Zap­pa is a song which I might enjoy musi­cal­ly, but the lyrics and nar­ra­tive are so cru­el, unpleas­ant, and misog­y­nis­tic that I can­not enjoy them, or the song itself ; « Car­los and the Bull » by Flo and Eddie is a semi-com­ic retelling of an old bull­fight-sto­ry record, where the sto­ry isn’t very good or inter­est­ing in the first place, and all the musi­cal ele­ments are def­i­nite­ly sub­or­di­nate to the nar­ra­tive ele­ments, so I do not find it fun or fun­ny in the way it is meant to be.
Lots of folk songs are designed to both­er the lis­ten­er, in order to con­vey a didac­tic mes­sage. For exam­ple, Woody Guthrie’s « 1913 Mas­sacre. »  Oth­er songs that tack­led sub­jects I did­n’t want to hear were more explic­it­ly reli­gious songs when I was much younger. How­ev­er, over time it is music itself that has com­plete­ly changed my per­spec­tive on reli­gion, result­ing in me devel­op­ing a great respect and study­ing the top­ic academically.
Pre­fer not to answer
Usu­al­ly i’ll like a song for the musi­cal aspect. So it’s hap­pened a few times where I liked a song for the melody but once I lis­tened to the lyrics, I was­n’t inter­est­ed any­more. I can’t think of any exam­ples right now but this is what usu­al­ly happens
« Suf­fer Lit­tle Chil­dren » by the Smiths is about the Moors mur­ders that took place in Man­ches­ter in the ear­ly 60s, where 5 chil­dren were mur­dered. The haunt­ing way Mor­ris­sey sings it and the line about how the chil­dren will always haunt the mur­der­ers make it a very dis­turb­ing and depress­ing lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly late at night. The actu­al music also con­tributes towards the dis­turb­ing feel of the song.
Any rap song boast­ing about how they’re the biggest and bad­dest.  I don’t like self-pro­mo­tion songs that brag of how vio­lent they are. Although the Tupac song Hit « Em Up is good and enter­tain­ing, the sub­ject mat­ter pro­motes vio­lence and to me that’s disturbing.
The kinks are a bunch of dick­bags but Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side was kind of repul­sive before look­ing at the his­to­ry behind it etc
I love Pink Floy­d’s Ani­mals, but at times it can seem a lit­tle too preachy and unimaginative
Tyler, the Cre­ator’s garbage « music ».
At the bot­tom of every­thing- This is not a per­son­al expe­ri­ence how­ev­er upon hear­ing this song my friend cried in fear due to it’s dark imagery which i then noticed later
I think Dylan’s album The Times They are a‑Changin » is the best i’ve heard when it comes to this. A song like « Hat­tie Car­roll » a case in point. Its the naked­ness of the lan­guage that gets me in this instance, but also the amaz­ing qual­i­ty if Dylan’s voice : youth­ful but wise and weather-worn.
The Who’s Fid­dle About from Tom­my very sud­den­ly and abrupt­ly brings in themes of sex­u­al assault and abuse of chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­abled chil­dren, by parental or famil­ial figures.
Some songs, such as Harold the Bar­rel by Gen­e­sis, tell a sto­ry that with­out read­ing into seems hap­py. As you lis­ten after read­ing into the lyrics, it changes your perception
Sat­ur­day Night Spe­cial, with its argu­men­ta­tion for gun control.
« Uncle Ernie » from the Who’s « Tom­my » so creepy.
When I lis­tened to Down With the Sick­ness for the first time after many years, the « No mom­my don’t do it again… » sequence caught me off guard. While it does­n’t both­er me as much now, it can still sur­prise me every now and then. It also makes lis­ten­ing to it in pub­lic… Dif­fi­cult to say the least.
There are tons and tons. Run for Your Life by The Bea­t­les is just one example.
Bob­by Bor­wn — Frank Zap­pa I don’t real­ly enjoy lis­ten­ing to a man’s homo­erot­ic interactions
In a lot of mod­ern pop (hip hop), the sub­ject mat­ter of the songs are real­ly hor­ren­dous, over­ly sex­u­alised and gross. It’s off-putting to me, because it’s not clever at all. Why are there even lyrics there if they don’t serve a musi­cal pur­pose ? I don’t like it when lyrics take the cen­tral stage, because it’s not more impor­tant than the oth­er instru­ments, despite what a lot of vocal­ists might tell you.
Songs with a blunt and straight-for­ward polit­i­cal mes­sage are not my preference.
A tune that always makes me think is Roy Harper’s « I hate the white man ». It’s such an aggres­sive dia­tribe writ­ten about white men in the west who have com­mer­cialised, killed, or robbed their way to the top and left oth­ers in their dust. That’s what it means to me at least. It’s just inter­est­ing com­ing from a white man him­self. I feel like Roy has a good grasp of the world and tells things like he sees them so I respect that. The song just makes me think about our world. I think good songs often do that.
First­ly, i don’t think there isn’t any sub­ject that should­n’t be allowed in a song. If it’s going to be about con­sti­pa­tion, either make it fun­ny (e.g. Weird al) or be decent about it.  When my first rela­tion end­ed, i did­n’t lis­ten to any­thing but nick harper’s « verse that time for­got » for about half a year. I can’t han­dle more than about twice a week and i don’t under­stand what it’s try­ing to tell me until this day.
Slay­er — Angel of Death  It’s a song about the hor­rors of the holo­caust with­out any judge­ment con­cern­ing the Nazis.
Ramm­stein’s « Tier » is a song about molesta­tion in a fam­i­ly, and while obvi­ous­ly being an anti-molesta­tion state­ment in all its bru­tal pow­er the sub­ject makes it hard to lis­ten to. You can’t real­ly enjoy a state-of-the-art met­al riff as there’s no way of react­ing pos­i­tive­ly to such a sub­ject matter.
The Dublin­ers : « The Sun is Burn­ing » It starts idyl­lic, but then an atom bomb destroys every­thing, and still the music and the nar­ra­tor don’t change, a kind of sub­tle under­state­ment that makes the mes­sage even more shattering.
Lyrics are extreme­ly pow­er­ful — that’s a large part of the attrac­tion of them. They can move one to tears of joy or utter despon­den­cy. They can unlock one’s deep­est fears and hopes, nor­mal­ly hid­den in the recess­es of one’s psy­che in order for one to get on with every­day liv­ing. Many, many songs have reduced me to tears. Some­times it’s just a phrase, at oth­er times it’s the whole song. Peter Gabriel’s song I Grieve has had me in floods of tears, unlock­ing the grief i had at the loss of my father.  Peter Ham­mill has an amaz­ing gift of explor­ing almost every thought you’ve prob­a­bly had dur­ing the man­i­fold moments of con­scious­ness. They’re not always pleas­ant to behold — but then, behold human­i­ty ! Joni Mitchel­l’s ear­ly music is a heart­felt out­pour­ing of what it is to be an ide­al­is­tic youth­ful dream­er, and her lyrics take me back to that time in my own life : it’s the mark of a great artist to be able to con­vinc­ing­ly take you on that or any oth­er journey.
Child abuse Rape
I used to be a staunch con­ser­v­a­tive, and I would often hear songs that tack­led issues that I thought at the time weren’t a big deal, and did­n’t need to be focused on. Ex. You need to calm down — Tay­lor Swift. Which is against peo­ple who are out­raged about LGBT  cul­ture. I was more closed mind­ed at the time and did­n’t want to hear those type of songs
The song Date Rape by Sub­lime. While the song is about a woman get­ting jus­tice by hav­ing her rapist put in jail, i still feel uncom­fort­able lis­ten­ing to it at times because i am ashamed that peo­ple (par­tic­u­lar­ly men) have actu­al­ly thought to do these hor­ri­ble things
Hey Joe by Jimi Hen­drix has always been a hard song me to lis­ten to, because the lyrics tell the sto­ry of a man mur­der­ing his wife for infi­deli­ty and the per­spec­tive seems to be glo­ri­fy­ing this murder.
Turn My Head — Live It makes me uncom­fort­able because it is such a pow­er­ful and beau­ti­ful song, yet so crazy lyri­cal­ly.  Put it this way- the song is either about Christ being cru­ci­fied OR a woman being raped.   And the par­al­lels are so exact that it scares me.
Saba­ton’s song The Final Solu­tion is about the hor­rors of the Holo­caust. While it in no way glo­ri­fies it, the lyrics are very per­son­al and painful for me
Con­way Twitty…Birthday Song. Just upset me.
There is a song called « Danc­ing With The Dev­il » by Immor­tal Tech­nique. The song tells a dis­turb­ing tale of act­ing out a crime against a per­son in grue­some detail. It is very dis­turb­ing, how­ev­er I still appre­ci­ate the song for depict­ing the sto­ry in a great way.
Most­ly coun­try songs with an unhealthy amount of patriotism
Like a Rolling Stone, I did­n’t like the gen­er­al feel­ing of misery
There’s still a coun­try song I can’t lis­ten to about a lit­tle girl with can­cer. It was a radio song too… Back in like 2005, if I had to guess. I don’t remem­ber the title, but it was just ridicu­lous­ly sad.
I lis­tened to bob dylans hur­ri­cane after watch­ing the hur­ri­cane, such a shane that racism was pur­pose­ly made a problem
Dad­dy by korn is one of the most dis­turb­ing songs i’ve heard. I don’t know why but I just can’t relate to what he’s singing about. Which I’m thank­ful for.
The first thing that comes to mind is Brown Shoes Don’t Make It by Frank Zap­pa.  It is a vul­gar sto­ry and cer­tain­ly dis­rupt­ed my listening.
I can’t put my fin­ger on exact ones
Pressed Rat and Warthog by Cream makes me want to jump out of a win­dow or get into drugs every time I hear it
Not rock or folk relat­ed but « loli­ta » by lana del rey real­ly both­ers me because the melody is amaz­ing, but when i found out that the song is about a pedophile, it creeped me out
I don’t like hip hop tbh because some of their songs have real­ly dark nar­ra­tives behind them which I don’t wan­na lis­ten to.
When I was lis­ten­ing to Tom­my towards the end of the album there’s a song describ­ing the main char­ac­ter found­ing his own reli­gion and that kind of took me out of it
Just Eminem. I feel like every oth­er line is some­thing sex­ist or abusive
In the song « Sick Again » by Led Zep­pelin Robert Plant is singing about a teenage groupie in, what I inter­pret as, a real­ly sex­u­al man­ner. I think it was inspired by the 14 year old groupie Jim­my Page saw (which is pret­ty dis­turb­ing). This knowl­edge plus the lyrics of this song just give me a gross feeling.
Boys Will Be Bugs — Cave­town. It’s just such a cheesy song with awful lyrics in my opin­ion. Extreme­ly cliched and basic.
The lyrics were too heavy and pow­er­ful for me
A friend played Until It Sleeps by Metal­li­ca, the song is about James Het­field­’s moth­er hav­ing can­cer. My moth­er had can­cer at the time and I just told him I did­n’t want to lis­ten to it.
It was Fast Car by Tra­cy Chap­man and because I’m scared of not doing any­thing with my life, it made me real­ly sad when she sang about want­i­ng to « buy a big house » and then talked about how she was still work­ing in the same super­mar­ket as when her and her boyfriend first left
I real­ized how many chil­dren were made orphans by the earth­quake that destroyed Port au Prince, Haiti.
I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy it when musi­cians get too polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed in their lyrics. For exam­ple, I used to lis­ten to Rage Against the Machine when i was younger but then I real­ized I did­n’t agree with alot of their polit­cal­ly charged lyrics and I would rather lis­ten to music that is an escape and not try­ing to tell me how to think.
As much as I appre­ci­ate the music, I’m not a big fan of the hedo­nism that goes along­side it, espe­cial­ly con­cern­ing rape or under­age liaisons.
Songs such as « Pol­ly » by Nir­vana or « Date rape » by Sub­lime are good songs to lis­ten to, but when lis­ten­ing care­ful­ly, they car­ry a mes­sage about rape, which is in itself uncom­fort­able to be con­front­ed with. In these cas­es how­ev­er, it is good that the song’s sub­ject is that which it is, since they are polit­i­cal­ly motivated.
A lot of artists in more extreme met­al and rap gen­res go into explic­it details about vio­lent crime that can be rather unpleasant.
99% of the time this is an issue is when a tru­ly ter­ri­ble sub­ject is paired with a catchy melody. Pumped Up Kicks, Lips Of An Angle, Semi Charmed Kind Of Life. Peo­ple sing these as hap­py go lucky, when the sub­ject is quite dark.
A Coun­try Boy Can Sur­vive — Hank Williams Jr.  It’s a good song but the mes­sage is racial­ly-cod­ed and unset­tling, espe­cial­ly as the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion deteriorates
I am usu­al­ly not a fan of rap or coun­try, most­ly due to shal­low lyrics and gener­ic musi­cal­i­ty (though I can’t think of any specif­i­cal­ly sto­ry-based songs).  I recent­ly lis­tened to Eminem’s « The Mar­shall Math­ers LP » which was quite the change from my rock/metal tastes and enjoyed it. The sto­ry in the song « Stan » was a stand­out ; very emo­tion­al despite its vio­lent top­ics. Sim­i­lar social com­men­tary in music I do enjoy comes from punk songs, for exam­ple the songs « Pret­ty Fly » and « Mota » by the Offspring.
Yes, of course songs about civ­il rights or racial issues or wom­en’s issues or First Nation issues are all thought provoking.
Oh yeah. I’ve def­i­nite­ly been heav­i­ly impact­ed by some songs. I still year up at Imag­ine and Hap­py Xmas (War is Over). And also a bunch of Woody Guthrie stuff hits hard with human rights.  Not exact­ly stuff I don’t want to hear, though.
Dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to music is music i enjoy. Its not that I did­n’t want to lis­ten to it but hear­ing the screams of lin­gua igno­ta made domes­tic abuse feel  alot more real
Nick Cave has a knack for mak­ing peo­ple uncom­fort­able. On his song « Song of Joy » I was sur­prised how graph­ic the depic­tions of rape and mur­der were.  It cer­tain­ly made me ques­tion what I was lis­ten­ing to.
There is a Tool song about being the vic­tim of sex­u­al assault as a child, which is tough to lis­ten to
Hand­cuffs By the Front Bot­toms because it tells a sto­ry about a guy who is in court for killing a man and every­one is against him, and anoth­er song that does this is John­ny 99 by Bruce Springsteen
Brown Sug­ar (The Rolling Stones) — it’s sex­ist and racist.
Can’t think of any­thing spe­cif­ic, but I can get thrown off some­times if the lyrics are unex­pect­ed­ly graph­ic or sex­u­al­ly vulgar
Most trap songs are very dis­gust­ing and only talk about sex and get­ting high.
Ger­man « Schlager » which at best tell extreme­ly banal sto­ries and at worst are some­where between uncom­fort­able sex­ist and down­right reactionary
Dawes a lit­tle bit of every­thing. Death of a dog. I can­not lis­ten to death of an animal
Pearl Jam’s Jere­my. When I found out he used two dif­fer­ent sto­ries, and paint­ed Jere­my’s sit­u­a­tion as some­thing much worse than it real­ly was, I could­n’t enjoy the song any­more, even though I think it’s a good song
Some­times songs just don’t chime with the mood I’m after from music at the time
The first time I heard a band called Ghost, I lis­tened to their song Year Zero, which has very satan­ic lyrics, for some rea­son made feel uneasy. This is even more sur­pris­ing as I am an athe­ist. The whole vibe of the song and singer’s voice along with the lyrics made a very eerie atmos­phere.  How­ev­er, I have lis­tened to that song many times now along with plen­ty of oth­er Ghost songs and I have grown to very much like the band and embrace their over­all sound. I have also dis­cov­ered that they are not actu­al­ly satanists, that is just a stage per­sona that defines who they are as musi­cal artists, and has noth­ing to do with their per­son­al lives. But I still can’t wrap my head around why I was both­ered by this, when I am com­plete­ly irre­li­gious. A big part of the rea­son, I guess, is because usu­al­ly in met­al if some­one is a satanist, or has satan­ic lyrics, the go-to singing style is growl­ing death met­al. But Ghost’s vocal­ist has a gen­tle, clean and almost ethe­re­al (or ghost­ly I guess) sound that I made me uneasy at the time.
You Can’t Be Too Strong by Gra­ham Park­er is a very pow­er­ful anti-abor­tion song, while I am pro-choice.  I still love the song for its pow­er and its raw hon­esty, but it pro­duces a good degree of cog­ni­tive dissonance.
Pret­ty much every Luke Bryan song tells some asi­nine sto­ry about danc­ing in front of the head­lights of a parked truck to some coun­try song on the radio, so that type of cliché garbage cer­tain­ly dis­rupts my listening.
Dance with the Dev­il by Immor­tal Tech­nique is a sto­ry­telling type of song with the excep­tion­al­ly dark nar­ra­tive of a char­ac­ter being pres­sured to beat, gang rape, and mur­der a woman, and after the act he found out it was his moth­er and then com­mit­ted suicide.
Any polit­i­cal song… Even when I agree, it’s just off putting and cheap -
Swear­ing, lyrics about how rich, pop­u­lar and cool the « artist » is
Any­thing involv­ing war or death is always a heavy top­ic to cov­er when its root­ed in reality/ history.
Sex­ism, vio­lence hid­den under a nice groove
I’m not a fan of explic­it­ly polit­i­cal songs, it affects my opin­ion of the song (I can’t get that much into megadeth or rage against the machine for example)
I don’t enjoy real­is­tic depic­tions or nar­ra­tives of vio­lence where the per­pe­tra­tor enjoys it.
I was lis­ten­ing to Orel­san and some of the lyrics regard­ing women made me very uncomfortable.
Most of the radio songs with lyrics that have noth­ing to say.
Sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly going through Bruce Spring­steen’s discog­ra­phy and found Reno, which involves a sex work­er rat­tling off a price list and a fair­ly explic­it descrip­tion of what fol­lows while the nar­ra­tor thinks of some­one else. I’m not gen­er­al­ly inter­est­ed in sex as a top­ic and espe­cial­ly not in such a seedy, trans­ac­tion­al con­text, but I guess the vis­cer­al dis­com­fort was the point. I actu­al­ly real­ly like the song now and even appre­ci­ate cer­tain lines I hat­ed at first.
Brown Sug­ar rolling stones
Land of the free by the killers I felt the lyrics were too obvi­ous­ly polit­i­cal and a bit too in your face
99% of rap. It’s noth­ing I can’t read in the news and already be offend­ed about.
You fool no one was one of my favourite Deep Pur­ple songs, until I read the lyrics and under­stood they were very sexist.
Tom­my (The Who)  The « rock opera » con­tains 2 songs detail­ing abuse of the pro­tag­o­nist at the hands of fam­i­ly mem­bers (Cousin Kevin, Fid­dle about). I don’t think these are sub­jects that can­not be touched upon in song but pri­or to this I had nev­er heard a song tack­le the sub­ject so explic­it­ly and direct­ly, this did actu­al­ly put me off lis­ten­ing to « Tom­my » in its entire­ty for a num­ber of years.
I love kanye west, but The Life of Pablo and My Beau­ti­ful Dark Twist­ed Fan­ta­sy are the def­i­n­i­tion of lazy and bor­ing song­writ­ing, and frankly an insult to his pre­vi­ous mas­ter­pieces.  The Rolling Stones have some ques­tion­able lyrics regard­ing women on songs like « Some Girls » and « Under My Thumb »,  but I still love the songs due to oth­er aspects.
But in a good way, made my world a lit­tle bigger
When I first heard « Walk on the Wild Side » (Lou Reed), I was not yet ready to think about sub­jects like transgenderism.

 

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chanson dont l’histoire ou les paroles vous ont dérangé. Si non, pourquoi ?
I’m gen­er­al­ly opti­mistic and open to lyrics and songwriting.
I think that songs are a means to tack­le dif­fi­cult sub­jects and I have yet to lis­ten to any­thing that was down­right dis­turb­ing. This may have some­thing to do with the gen­res I enjoy.
No
Not too sure, but maybe because I know it is just a song and the the actu­al event
I always respect any sto­ry an artist wish­es to tell, it does­n’t put me off
I’m fair­ly open to ideas and music, and haven’t had any gross­ly jar­ring experiences.
No
I focus on the music more
N/A
I am not eas­i­ly dis­turbed by books, movies, or songs
Nope
If I like the music and I like the vocals, then I don’t care about the lyrics. Good lyrics obvi­ous­ly make a song that much bet­ter, but they can’t sub­ract from the over­all expe­ri­ence no mat­ter how « bad » they might be. A good exam­ple here is Iron Maid­en’s Quest for Fire which is often regard­ed as a bad song sole­ly for it’s lyrics (it men­tions mankind and dinosaurs liv­ing togeth­er at the same time in a not-meant-to-be-humor­ous way), yet I real­ly enjoy it.
I’m open to whatever
No
I dont under­stand lyrics that much and its hard for me to remem­ber them after i look them up on google
I haven’t encoun­tered any such dis­pleas­ing artists.
I can’t ever imag­ine hav­ing such a neg­a­tive feel­ing toward a song apart from not lik­ing the music due to per­son­al tastes
I don’t typ­i­cal­ly get dis­tressed by stories
Every­thing is an open play­ing field in art. Some songs do it poor­ly or in a corny way, but i’ve nev­er thought some­one should­n’t say what they believe
Nope
I’m pret­ty open to all top­ics of dis­cus­sion and I think it’s impor­tant to talk about them so that the prob­lems are known. More mod­ern music talks about love and sex a lot more direct­ly than in the past, but I don’t think that’s the rea­son I don’t lis­ten to it. It’s more that I don’t like the music itself as much. I’m also not great at lis­ten­ing to the lyrics of a song, I would have to active­ly think about them or look them up to know what is being said and what is meant.
I’d like to say I’m open to most stories
Art is a reflec­tion of the human expe­ri­ence, for bet­ter or worse. Nobody, I think, enjoys the uni­ver­sal­ly reviled aspects of the human expe­ri­ence, but that does­n’t mean those aspects are not equal­ly wor­thy of our head­space as the things that delight us.  In the words of Voltaire (I think) « noth­ing human dis­gusts me ».
Any­time a song has told an intense sto­ry I have always wel­comed it — we should feel chal­lenged by art. Sure, art should be com­fort­ing, but it should also give us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­stand new perspectives.
Don’t focus on the lyrics often.
No
I’ve lis­tened to a ton of real­ly dark met­al. Noth­ing that could be said in a song would sur­prise me. If you’ve lis­tened to Can­ni­bal Corpse and under­stood the lyrics, there is noth­ing out there that will ever sur­prise you lyrics-wise after that.
There aren’t real­ly any sub­jects that I would­n’t want to hear about.
No.
No
I haven’t found that song yet, but I am sure it exists
No
No
I don’t get both­ered by much of any­thing and I don’t seek out music that I think I would­n’t like.
No songs have I heard have made me dis­like the narrative
If a song has a good enough musi­cal arrange­ment, the lyri­cal con­tent does not real­ly mat­ter to me
Selec­tive bias
Even if I dis­like the lyrics I can still enjoy the music.
I think I’m rather open mind­ed to hear­ing any­thing in a song. I could under­stand if a cer­tain issue was per­son­al to someone.
I like to think the song tells a sto­ry. I always lis­ten to the sto­ries I like. If there’s a sto­ry I don’t like or am nit inter­est­ed in, I avoid lis­ten­ing to it.
I’m open to hear­ing any kind of story
Even though I may dis­agree with some of the lyri­cal themes, I am a strong advo­cate for free speech. If the music is good I will con­tin­ue to lis­ten. The lyri­cal themes of Queen­sryche’s Oper­a­tion : Mind­crime album is some­thing I strong­ly dis­agree with  (com­mu­nism) but the sto­ry pro­gres­sion and music was good.
No.
I am open to all good con­ver­sa­tion, no top­ic off limits.
Very open minded
I’m pret­ty used to it all, I watch alot of hor­ror films and read a bunch of wikipedia arti­cles about true crime so it does­n’t both­er me much any­more. And in dirty songs like « Bob­by Brown goes down » I can see the humour. Allthough there prob­a­bly is songs that are so graph­ic that I could­n’t stand lis­ten­ing to it but at this moment I can’t recall ever hear­ing one.
I don’t get offend­ed by music really.
I’m most­ly open to hear­ing about dif­fi­cult sub­jects and expe­ri­ences, even if taboo, espe­cial­ly in musi­cal form. I’m not as inclined to see quite any­thing cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, as I find it more dis­turb­ing or anx­i­ety provoking
Music is sup­posed to be free expres­sion, bar none. If it’s uncom­fort­able, it was like­ly intend­ed that way.
All sub­ject mat­ter is fair game in art.
Music is art so I think all sto­ries told in music for or any oth­er art form should be respect­ed at least
I’m not very sen­si­tive about that sort of thing and any song like that has a clear­ly com­i­cal or satir­i­cal nature.
When I sit down to hear a sto­ry in a song, I go through it until the end.
I’m quite an open per­son i dont real­ly mind hear­ing about any types of issues
I’m open to hear­ing about any lev­el of dif­fi­cult con­cepts in music. Music is great for tack­ling dif­fi­cult sub­jects. Spring­steen has used music to tack­le racial divides, eco­nom­ic strug­gles, mur­der, rape, war crimes, etc.
Peo­ple write songs about all kinds of dif­fer­ent sub­jects for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. I’ve nev­er found any of them to make me uncom­fort­able. Espe­cial­ly since almost all pop­u­lar music is about either drugs, sex, or what­ev­er hot but­ton polit­i­cal issue is big at the time.
Not much both­eres me to that extent
No
I can’t real­ly think of any nar­ra­tive sub­jects that would both­er me enough to take me out of a song.    If I like the music itself enough, then the lyrics prob­a­bly won’t both­er me
Because an artist can sing about every­thing : the bad stuff and the good stuff. Every­thing from his per­spec­tive so it does­n’t both­er me much to lis­ten to oth­er per­spec­tives about life even when it’s an oppo­site opin­ion from me
Lack of empathy ?
I respect what­ev­er sto­ry the artist wants to tell. While I some­times don’t real­ly agree with some mes­sages, usu­al­ly I do and think they are real­ly well thought out and pre­sent­ed. I haven’t real­ly lis­tened to any­thing super political
I don’t get both­ered by sto­ries in songs, besides I find the most dis­turb­ing sto­ries usu­al­ly the most fascinating.
Try to lis­ten to humourous songs
I don’t lis­ten that much to hip-hop/rap music !
I would auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch off to the lyrics
N/A
I nev­er get upset when lis­ten­ing to a sto­ry, we’ll I can get upset but nev­er tiggered
I’m not usu­al­ly both­ered by what­ev­er an artist wish­es to dis­cuss, includ­ing extreme top­ics found in met­al. It’s their choice.
Not me per­son­al­ly, but it’s like­ly that some peo­ple are offend­ed by lyrics to Lola by the Kinks or Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed
I con­dider the singer to be a nar­ra­tor. Songs do not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the per­spec­tive of the artist and aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly meant to rep­re­sent a moral fig­ure (like many rolling stones songs)
All lyrics are valid
These kind of songs usu­al­ly try to side with the good and I like a good sto­ry either way
Not real­ly, I can han­dle any subject.

 

Pouvez-vous résumer Eleanor Rigby des Beatles ?
She dies
Eleanor Rig­by died alone
Yes, it’s about an old lady and her passing
Genre or style of music and lyrics can skip eas­i­ly between these imposed labels of types of music which is some­times the joy of it. You can lis­ten to a very jol­ly hap­py tune that turns out to have a very dark mes­sage or story.
Lone­li­ness
A lone­ly soli­tary lady peaks at the world, nev­er the bride not even the brides­maid, she lives a silent unful­filled and anony­mous life of long­ing to no avail. All that she leaves is a name on a grave, sim­i­lar­ly the priests life efforts are ignored.
She is Lon­ley.  Sor­ry I can’t do this on my phone
A girl and father Mcken­zie do var­i­ous things and they feel melancholic
Peo­ple on their own
Song about lone­li­ness and repression
Nobody came
Eleanor died alone, and the song also men­tioned some oth­er lone­ly peo­ple includ­ing father mckenzie
There’s been a wed­ding and Eleanor pick­’s Up the rice, and then there’s some­thing about father mcken­zi (I think) he writ­ing some word. And it all ends with Eleanor dies
Eleanor Rig­by is a woman who lives her life alone and in the end is buried by a pas­tor who why. A cen­tral theme of the song is « where all the lone­ly peo­ple come from/where they belong ».
Eleanor dies, Father Mack­en­sie is writ­ing a sermon/darning his socks in lone­li­ness because the world is cold and unfeel­ing and peo­ple are not much better
It is a song about loneliness
It shows the lives of two lone­ly peo­ple, one is Eleanor Rig­by the oth­er Father Mcken­zie. Rig­by dies in the church and father Mcken­zie buries her. No one was saved.
She lives alone and cleans the church for a liv­ing. She dies and is buried by the apa­thet­ic priest Father macken­zie. No one was saved.
She dies and was buried along with her name.  She is buried by anoth­er lone­ly soul.  Essen­tial­ly a song about liv­ing (the priest) and dying (Rig­by) alone.
Eleanor Rig­by is about an old lady and a priest who see each oth­er week­ly in church, but because of their sta­tions in life, they can’t act on their feel­ings, and Eleanor sim­ply takes them to the grave with Father Macken­zie pre­sid­ing over her funeral.
A spin­ster named Eleanor Rig­by dies, and is buried by a sim­i­lar­ly-lone­ly priest named Father mckenzie.
Some­one dies, and dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters pre­pare for a funeral (?)
Eleanor is real­ly poor and dies with­out any­body car­ing about her except father mckenzie
It is about the lone­ly peo­ple in the world and the despair and bore­dom they live in. As a metaphor for this we are told about two peo­ple, Eleanor Rig­by and Father Macken­zie, who live in lone­li­ness and soli­tude, work­ing so hard even though no one will ever view their work. Eleanor dies, and Father Macken­zie vis­its her grave. Even though they both led sim­i­lar lives, they nev­er got to meet.
Eleanor died.  Father of the church wrote a ser­mon no one heard because no one came to the funer­al but him.
Elenore dies alone Father M is the only one to go to her funer­al he’s lone­ly too
Eleanor Rig­by works in a church, pick­ing up rice after a wed­ding. She is lone­ly and enig­mat­ic. Father mcken­zie is also lone­ly, writ­ing words for a ser­mon no one will hear and darn­ing socks alone at night.   Eleanor Rig­by dies and isn’t remem­bered. No one goes to her funer­al. Father mcken­zie buries her. He then sim­ply walks away.  (I can’t believe I did­n’t think of this as an exam­ple of a nar­ra­tive, love this song)
Eleanor rig­by picks up the rice in a church where the wed­ding has been  waits at the win­dow  wears the face she keeps in a jar by the door father mcen­zie writ­ing the words of a smur­man that no one will hear  he is work­ing darn­ing his socks he does­n’t care Eleanor rig­by dies and father mcen­zie buries her and no one else is there
Eleanor Rig­by is a lone­ly woman who « picks up the rice in a church » and dies lonely
An old­er woman who lived alone but fre­quent­ed the church dies and is buried in a small cer­e­mo­ny with no atten­dees or mourn­ers besides the priest.
A lone­ly women, pick­ing up scraps after people
Eleanor Rig­by is an elder­ly lady who is devout­ly reli­gious. How­ev­er, when she dies, no one cares about her dying.
Eleanor Rig­by and Father mcken­zie are two lone­ly peo­ple. They are sort of the peo­ple who are there in the back­ground of things like Mrs. Rig­by clean­ing the rice after a wed­ding. One of them dies, I think it was Eleanor, and mcken­zie buries her. It’s a sad song.
Some­thing about a woman who died alone and the priest is the only one who attends her funeral
She died in church and was buried with her name… Nobody came.
It’s about a women that died alone and nobody even knows that she died (?)
Eleanor died a lone­ly death, father maken­zie does her ser­vice.  There was no res­o­lu­tion to their loneliness
The lone­ly exis­tence of one individual.
Its about loneliness
An old woman spends her days being alone and iso­lat­ed and attends a wed­ding  to pick up the rice at the church. She lat­er dies alone, with no one to attend her funeral
Elenor rig­by died. Funer­al hap­pens. Nobody came. Church peo­ple are weird.
There’s an old lone­ly woman named Eleanor Rig­by who lives and dies alone and forgotten.
Sad lady lives sad life. No one cares for her. She dies no one cares. Preach­er buries her and is a lit­tle sad she is dead. Life goes on.
Elanor Rig­by seem­ing­ly gets mar­ried to nobody, Father mcken­zie buries an unsaved soul
Two lone­ly souls (Eleanor her­self and the min­is­ter of her parish (or some­thing like that) live their sep­a­rate lives in a state of exis­ten­tial lone­li­ness, miss Rig­by even­tu­al­ly dying as lone­ly as she lived.
Eleanor Rig­by appears to be a spin­ster who dies unmourned, save for the priest who buries her in an unknown back­wa­ter. We don’t know whether she led a colour­ful or unevent­ful life in her ear­li­er years, but she is lone­ly at the end. Per­haps she wait­ed at the win­dow all those years for­lorn­ly for a lover who spurned her, or who nev­er came back from a war. It’s a mas­ter piece of sto­ry telling from Paul mccart­ney, evok­ing deep emo­tions with a few well-cho­sen words, and is of course a great exam­ple of how the folk tra­di­tion seeped into many of the musi­cal styles that fol­lowed it.
About a lone­ly indi­vid­ual who did­n’t have any close friends or fam­i­ly, and even­tu­al­ly died and was for­got­ten, with­out any­one attend­ing her funeral.
Depres­sion
Eleanor Rig­by is an old woman with no fam­i­ly. She ends up dying and being buried by Father Macken­zie and nobody comes to her funer­al. Father Macken­zie, for his part, works as a priest of a church, but very few peo­ple come to hear his ser­mons. He works and nobody cares. Love that song
Eleanor Rig­by and Father mcken­zie are both lone­ly peo­ple who always want some­one to vis­it, yet no one ever does. Rig­by dies and her fam­i­ly line ends there, mcken­zie buries her and was the only one to wit­ness her funeral
Eleanor Rig­by dies alone at a church and her funer­al is giv­en by the equal­ly lone­ly priest, Father mckenzie
Peo­ple die and nobody notices they’re gone
If I remem­ber, it is a short sum­ma­ry of 3 peo­ple and their lives  with the agree­ment that we have some­thing in com­mon with them and,hence, we are all lonely.
The song tells the sto­ry of all the lone­ly peo­ple in life who sim­ply exist each day
She does, nobody comes to the funer­al, so Father macken­zie buries her alone
It is about a lone­ly lady named Eleanor Rig­by who goes to a church and sits down where she dies and nobody will remem­ber her and was buried by the church father.
It fol­lows the life of a few peo­ple, show­ing how they’re lone­ly and put on airs for no reason
Elenor Rig­by makes a meal for nobody because she lives alone. Father Maken­zie writes a ser­mon for a church nobody attends. They are both alone and insignificant
There is a woman who picks up the rice in a church where a wed­ding has been, lives in a dream, waits at the win­dow wear­ing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Then theres father Father mcken­zie who writes the words on a ser­mon that no one will hear and he darns his socks in the night while theres nobody there. Then eleanor rig­by died in the church and was buried along with her name and nobody came, and father mcken­zie buried her.
Eleanor Rig­by was a shut in with no fam­i­ly who died alone.
Goes to church
Eleanor Rig­by died alone with no fam­i­ly or friends either at her side or at her grave.   Father mcken­zie has no flock.   The nar­ra­tor (Paul) takes pity on all these lone­ly peo­ple even though he him­self is alone.
A lady named Eleanor rig­bys soul died along with her name that’s writ­ten on her gravestone
Eleanor Rig­by leads a lone­ly life then dies, and no one attends her funeral.
A woman named Eleanor Rig­by lived alone and was sort of mys­te­ri­ous, and had no rel­a­tives. When she died a priest named Father Macken­zie buried her and no one came to the funer­al. Her name died with her.
I’d say the biggest theme is lone­li­ness. Just about the nature of a post-war world and being lonely
Lone­ly woman named Eleanor Rig­by, hangs around church­es pick­ing up rice, dies and no one but the vic­ar (Father Macken­zie) attends her funeral
It’s about being lone­ly and « where did all the lone­ly peo­ple come from. » It talks about two lone­ly peo­ple, one woman who dies with­out a hus­band, and one man who is pas­tor and gives ser­mons that no one hears, gives Eleanor Rig­by (but no one comes), and also pre­sum­ably dies.
Basi­cal­ly, eleanor rig­by lived a lone­ly life, she died and no one even both­ered to come to her funeral
Eleanor Rig­by is lone­ly and goes to an emp­ty church and pre­tends to get mar­ried. When she dies Father Macken­zie writes a ser­mon and holds a funer­al for her but nobody shows up
Isn’t it describ­ing lone­ly peo­ple who are infi­nite­ly lone­ly…? I hon­est­ly might not remem­ber. I just remem­ber the cho­rus : « all the lone­ly people.… »
Eleanor Rig­by dies alone and Father Macken­zie buries her.
I believe it was a sto­ry about a spec­ta­tor in Eleanor Rig­by’s life.
Eleanor Rig­by and Father Mckenis
Eleanor Rig­by is lone­ly, dies after being left at the altar, and the priest who sends her off is aware that no one will hear his sermon.
She works in a church and dies alone.  Has a sad and lone­ly existence
A woman dies alone and nobody goes to her funer­al or remem­bers her
Eleanor gets mar­ried in a church, and even­tu­al­ly dies. Father Macken­zie holds the funer­al and no one shows up.
Eleanor dies and no one shows up at her funer­al besides Father mckenzie.
Eleanor Rig­by is sup­posed to get married.
A woman (Eleanor Rig­by) is a care­tak­er of a church, she dies and has no one attend her funer­al besides Father Mackenzie
Old lady has a full rou­tine and even­tu­al­ly dies unevent­ful­ly, to show the poten­tial bleak­ness of life
It’s about lone­ly peo­ple and about Eleanor and Father Macken­zie meet­ing too late when they could have been some sort of com­pan­ions but they nev­er met
Eleanor Rig­by died in a church and some­thing to do with Father Mckenzie.
A lone­ly old lady died and nobody came to her funeral.
She died in the church and was buried along with her name
Eleanor Rig­by is a lone­ly woman who makes up a life for her­self. Father mcken­zie is a preach­er who nobody wants to go to.  When Eleanor final­ly died she left the world noth­ing but her name.  It’s a lament of all the lone­ly peo­ple in the world.
Only vague­ly — it’s about a woman expe­ri­enc­ing loneliness.
Kind of…Eleanor Rig­by is at the church. No one is there. The Father in the church is lone­ly as well. Eleanor Rig­by dies lat­er in the song and the Father buries her but no one else is there at the funeral.
Well the lone­ly peo­ple stayed lone­ly. Great song btw. My think­ing cap was not on.  The sad­dest to me was Eleanor died alone, no one came to the grave. Like we all die alone.
Lone­ly lady.  Lone­ly priest.  She dies he buries her.
The song con­cerns a woman, Eleanor Rig­by, who is liv­ing a lone­ly life, devoid of per­son­al con­nec­tions. Lat­er, she dies, and an equal­ly lone­ly Father Mcken­zie must bury her.
It’s about the sto­ry of two lone­ly peo­ple who go about their life in soli­tude. It is implied that they could have found com­pan­ion­ship in each oth­er but they nev­er meet.
I only know it is about loneliness
The song con­trasts the activ­i­ties of Eleanor and Father Macken­zie and accen­tu­ates their emo­tions in the chorus.
Eleanor Rig­by is a lone­ly wid­ow who even­tu­al­ly ends up being lone­ly and dies in solitude.
Lone­ly woman dies and nobody comes to her funeral
Basi­cal­ly, Father Macken­zie buries the title char­ac­ter who is a metaphor for the way we all fade into mem­o­ry or are forgotten.
Eleanor Rig­by dies and is buried along with her name, by a lone­ly and depressed priest to tens to her bur­ial alone.
A lone­ly spin­ster named Eleanor Rig­by dies ; she is buried by the local priest, Father macken­zie, who is also lone­ly in his own way.
Eleanor Rig­by is a lone­ly, down and out woman that dies. Her funer­al is han­dled by an equal­ly lone­ly and failed priest, Fr Mcken­zie, and no one cared.
Eleanor Rig­by is a lone­ly woman who lives in a church where also a lone­ly priest is liv­ing. Eleanor dies and nobody comes to her funeral.
Some­thing about a girl dying and a pas­tor that no one lis­tens to
Maybe not — she counts the days ?
As far as I remem­ber it was a woman who dies in the church lone­ly or some­thing like that.
Eleanor Rig­by dies alone, as do oth­ers, the speak­er reflects on loneliness.
A woman dies and is not mourned by any­one close at the funer­al. Father Macken­zie pro­ceeds with the funer­al as a sort of vic­ar­i­ous stu­dent of the mes­sage of the song.
Eleanor dies a rather mean­ing­less death and is basi­cal­ly for­got­ten by every­one,  with an extreme­ly bleak funeral
At the start of the song, Eleanor Rig­by is pick­ing up rice after a wed­ding, while Father Macken­zie writes words to ser­mon nobody will hear and darns his socks alone.   Eleanor Rig­by died alone.
It’s a song about soci­etal lone­li­ness.  ER lives and dies a lone­ly life, fin­ish­ing up buried with her name at a funer­al where « nobody came ».
Peo­ple liv­ing lone­ly lives and dying alone, with­out mak­ing an impact on the world around them (I think?)
Eleanor lives alone and dies alone, Father Macken­zie pre­sides over her funer­al but nobody goes
Its about specif­i­cal­ly two peo­ple doing mun­dane things that no one cares about in the vers­es jux­ta­posed with « all the lone­ly peo­ple » in the chorus.
If there was a « vague­ly » option, I would have cho­sen that.  I believe that a lone­ly woman « Eleanor Rig­by » has passed away and the also lone­ly « Father mcken­zie » per­forms the funer­al ser­vice, and in the end « Father mcken­zie » also dies.  The song ques­tions who mourns for peo­ple who lived their lives alone ?  I think any­way, so if I am way off, you can count this as « No. »
Old lady dies, priest burys her. Nobody went to her funer­al, she died alone.
An old woman lives in her mem­o­ries of her life and acts as though on auto pilot through to her death, is buried and forgotten.
The song is, para­dox­i­cal­ly, about the numer­ous amounts of lone­ly peo­ple there are. Eleanor Rig­by, very lone­ly, dies and has her lone­ly funer­al per­formed by Father mcken­zie, also very lonely
Elenor rig­by does gen­er­al things while feel­ing lonely.
It tells the sto­ry of of an old woman who is lone­ly and a old priest who is also lonely.
A woman dies alone and unknown
Elenor is an orphan that died and nobody knew her — it’s a sto­ry about ppl that no one knows
How peo­ple are lone­ly in this world full of peo­ple. In the song it’s eleanor and father mckenzie
She died alone
Eleanor is get­ting mar­ried at a church. Does no one come ? She dies and Father mcken­zie vis­its the grave. Oh, he also deliv­ers a ser­mon that no one hears.
It’s about lone­ly peo­ple Eleanor Rig­by and father Macken­zie. What hap­pens in their lives. Reflect­ing on their desires and feelings
She was a spin­ster who nev­er mar­ried and there was no one who cared about her even in old age and death except the priest.
Peo­ple who die with­out hav­ing much impact in the world or oth­er people.
Mac­ca writes about all the lone­ly peo­ple in the world bring­ing up two exam­ples and pon­der­ing what goes on in their lives and who they are and how they feel. It’s great.
She is a women who works at a church and wants to help all the lone­ly peo­ple (I think). In the end, she dies alone and no one comes to her funer­al, show­ing she was one of the lone­ly people.
Lone­ly people
She had a lone­ly life, and then she died and nobody came to the funeral.
Basi­cal­ly Rig­by is an aging spin­ster and a lone­ly one at that. Rough­ly her life, and that of oth­er lone­ly people.
 

 

Ques­tions adressées à des com­mu­nautés de fans

Diriez-vous que les paroles de Led Zeppelin sont subversives ?
It depends on the song, Most led zep­pelin lyrics are not, such as ten years gone or tan­ger­ine, which are about love, or songs like immi­grant song and Achilles last stand which are based on mythol­o­gy. A lot of these songs fall under these cat­e­gories and very few have lyrics I would call subversive
It’s not sub­ver­sive. It’s blends and extends blues and per­fects rock.
I would real­ly say Zep­pelin lyrics where sub­ver­sive. Yeah they had some song that men­tions the top­ic of sex, and most peo­ple would not agree to have that top­ic metioned in a song. But Zep­pelin does have quite a few songs that are harm­less for the most part for exam­ple : Going To Cal­i­for­nia, Kash­mir, Thank You, Stair­way, and many more
They pushed the bound­aries of song­writ­ing in the 70s as they were some­what heav­ier and edgier
The lyrics cov­er a wide vari­ety of sub­jects.  Some sub­ver­sive, some blues, some — damn near pop
Some­times they can be sub­ver­sive, but most of the Zep­pelin I am famil­iar with (I, II, III, & IV), use lyrics that I would describe as being typ­i­cal blues lyrics
I think most of their lyrics are about per­son­al sto­ries or using mys­ti­cal themes. They might have a few exceptions.
They wrote their lyrics for every­one and any­one to lis­ten to
Led Zep­pelin’s lyrics range from talk­ing about sex to also hav­ing beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten lyrics
I think their lyrics, espe­cial­ly the more sex­u­al lyrics, may have been sub­ver­sive when the music was first released. By today’s stan­dards, I would not con­sid­er most of their lyrics subersive.
Sure there’s lots of « baby baby » songs and plant moan­ing but there’s also some about mythol­o­gy and prob­lems that don’t have to do with love
It is a sub­ver­sion of the sta­tus quo regard­ing male sex­u­al­i­ty in soci­ety.  It is pow­er and sex from a pri­mal stand­point with no apolo­gies.   Also a sub­ver­sion of orga­nized reli­gion as they have a dark side through lyrics and rumors.
Led Zep­pelins music does not seem to try and over­throw someone/somthing
It may be because I’m younger, but lyrics like Led Zep­pelin’s, with a lot of intense sex­u­al innu­en­do, have become stan­dard. I feel it was the decade before that set the stage for sub­ver­sive lyrics with a cul­mi­na­tion at Wood­stock. Led Zep­pelin helped set the stage for the next wave of tru­ly sub­ver­sive lyrics in heavy metal
Well…Just GREAT EAR Songs
Sub­ver­sive in the sense that some ideas put across in their music could be taboo or chal­leng­ing to estab­lished norms, I sup­pose — « Misty Moun­tain Hop, » or just chal­leng­ing indi­vid­u­als to think dif­fer­ent­ly — « Stair­way To Heaven. »
The lyrics tend to break the bound­aries lot of times, some­times verg­ing on being inco­her­ent but ulti­mate­ly try­ing to tread the unex­plored grounds
In the grand scheme of things, I do not believe that they make sub­ver­sive music. This is from the point of view from some­one who lis­tens to Rage Against the Machine and oth­er polit­i­cal met­al bands. So rel­a­tive to my oth­er music tastes, they are not.
Their music cov­ers a wide range of top­ics, from girls and cars to Tolkein and mys­ti­cism.  They are no more or less « sub­ver­sive » than 80% of rock bands
I think they cov­er a lot of dif­fer­ent styles, first blues rock for sure, then by LZ3 they delve into folki­er lyrics and then 4 and hous­es of the holy deals with more mys­ti­cal lyrics, but through­out their career they still have blues influences
Yes, because they played a role in the counter cul­ture at the time and where dif­fer­ent from most oth­er bands.
Not real­ly. I sim­ply don’t con­sid­er the vast major­i­ty of Led Zep­pelin’s lyrics to be sub­ver­sive. But this does depend on each indi­vid­u­al’s interpretation.
 They don’t do much soci­etal com­men­tary, just sex cit­rus and vikings
Nah
No
Rock has always been a genre made for the peo­ple against the Establishment/Authority and that is the soul of rock music, it seeks to chal­lenge author­i­ty and raise a move­ment against it.
I think, in some ways, Led Zep­pelin is sub­ver­sive of itself. They have songs that pre­cise­ly meet the expec­ta­tion of what a « rock song » should sound like or be about (sex, etc.) Such as Black Dog, The Lemon Song. How­ev­er, they also have songs about Tolkien (Ram­ble on, Going to California).
Not always about sex or drugs like some would believe. Often rather reflec­tive like down by the sea­side and ten years gone, but also myth­i­cal and mys­te­ri­ous like bat­tle of ever­more and achilles last stand
Led zep­pelin were musi­cians more than activists and played music sole­ly to enter­tain rather than to have some strong message
I don’t think they were nec­es­sar­i­ly « rebel­lious, » except in the fact that they stole some music and made it sound bet­ter. They made rock some­thing else and end­ed too soon
I don’t know
If I can be hon­est. I don’t real­ly under­stand the ques­tion. Sorry.
Only inso­far as their lyrics are very sexual.
They don’t real­ly ever chal­lenge the gov­ern­ment, reli­gion, or any­thing like that. Their lyrics are about love, women, being loud and hav­ing fun, sad­ness, etc.
I think they might have been at the time, and prob­a­bly shaped mod­ern stan­dards for what is con­sid­ered « sub­ver­sive », but as is the edgi­est I think they get is singing about under­age girls (ie  Sick Again)
Nope
I think, in gen­er­al, yes, but there are some songs that more sub­ver­sive than oth­ers. Most of their songs are about sex and girls, which isn’t very sur­pris­ing, but it’s not extreme­ly obvi­ous each time, songs like « Fool in the Rain » and « Ram­ble On » are a lot more dis­crete than songs like « Whole Lot­ta Love » and « Good Times Bad Times. » I think most of the songs about girls are more sub­ver­sive. But then there are oth­er songs that aren’t about girls like « Immi­grant Song » and « Kash­mir » but just because they aren’t about girls does­n’t mean they don’t have pas­sion. These songs still have a lot of emo­tion behind them and the lyrics aren’t neu­tral, so I would still count them as subversive.
Not real­ly
Could poten­tial­ly be due to me not being from the era when led zep­pelin was up and com­ing, but i’ve always just lis­tened for the sto­ry but not par­tic­u­lar­ly a mes­sage with­in it
I don’t know what you mean
I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly regard Led Zep­pelin as overt­ly sub­ver­sive, as one would, say, the Sex Pis­tols or Rage Against the Machine. But, their depic­tions of some of the less PG aspects of human inter­ac­tion (Whole Lot­ta Love, Dazed and Con­fused, Black Dog, Slop­py Drunk) sub­vert puri­tan­i­cal cul­tur­al under­pin­nigs of West­ern culture.
I don’t think of Led Zep­pelin of a band that chal­lenges author­i­ty or insti­tu­tions, I do not con­sid­er their lyri­cal con­tent to be subversive.
At first I said no, because I was think­ing of 90s anti-estab­lish­ment rock, and I think of Led Zep­pelin’s lyrics as being more in the peace and love era of rock. But then I thought about how every girl in Amer­i­ca want­ed to get into Robert Plan­t’s pants…that cer­tain­ly was­n’t what the par­ents and politi­cians of Amer­i­ca want­ed to see.
For the time it come out on, there pio­neer work and atti­tude laid down new roots for oth­er gen­res and music to sprout from.
Led Zep­pelin would write about fairy tales when most bands wouldn’t.
On Led Zep­pelin I, they main­ly focus on blues and trib­ute African Amer­i­can artists. On II, they main­ly focus on the rock they became known for. III was a strange out­lier, because it was most­ly folk/country sound­ing. IV becomes much dark­er and grit­ty sound­ing, and it keeps going on.
They were a bit sex­u­al at a time when you couldn’t/shouldn’t be overt­ly sex­u­al, but they were not sub­ver­sive.  I define sub­ver­sive as rebelling against an opres­sive soci­ety.  Zep­pelin was­n’t about rais­ing social con­scious­ness.   They were about sex and rock and roll
At the time, they were push­ing bound­aries. The lyrics seem pret­ty tame now, but singing open­ly about sex and drugs back in the 60’s was­n’t exact­ly the social norm.
There were sub­ver­sive at times with regards to their sex­u­al content
I find the lyrics more about life in general
It was­n’t often they took a stab at a per­son or persons.
For the time these songs were writ­ten and cre­at­ed (and those that could be under­stood), Zep’s lyrics were, for the most part, about females/sex/etc… A group of top­ics that were in the ear­ly stages of full dis­cus­sion and development.
Some­times, it was real­ly bold for the time.
Some songs kin­da show you that things will be alright and tell dif­fer­ent meanings
I don’t inter­pret their lyrics as any­thing subversive
For their time, the had some music that went against the grain. Songs about hav­ing your lemon squeezed
There are lots of times when they men­tion a sub­ver­sion of how we live our lives, like on stair­way to heav­en « there’s still time to change the road you’re on »
Im not sure
I grew up lis­ten­ing to them and I turned out fine.
Led Zep­pelins lyrics were based on the blues, love­mak­ing, women and they also had a lot of songs based on fan­ta­sy sto­ries such as Lord of the Rings. They nev­er wrote a sub­ver­sive lyric — or at least not intentionally.
Depends on the song in ques­tion, Led Zep­pelin has many songs that are stereo­typ­i­cal rock sub­ject mat­ter and oth­ers that sub­vert the usu­al premis­es of oth­er songs by more gener­ic rock bands.
Rock music is def­i­nite­ly sub­ver­sive, a sym­bol of rebel­lion against estab­lished and often non­sen­si­cal norms.  Zep­pelin as per­haps the defin­ing rock band exem­pli­fies all these things : heavy dis­tort­ed gui­tar, lyrics that sing of taboo sex,  tight jeans and open blous­es, and of course all the on-tour hedo­nism and drugs.
I do not think the lyrics of Led Zep­pelin incite peo­ple to do bad things, and nei­ther does rock. In this way, there is no sub­ver­sion here.
They’re stan­dard blues/rock lyrics : women who have done wrong, rock music is great, et cetera, with the occa­sion­al mys­ti­cal ref­er­ence thrown in. But rock is not a sub­ver­sive genre ; it might have been used for sub­ver­sive pur­pos­es or been asso­ci­at­ed with coun­ter­cul­tur­al behav­ior, but the music itself is not sub­ver­sive. The belief that it is reflects the baby-boom gen­er­a­tion’s ongo­ing and all-too-per­sua­sive desire to estab­lish itself and its cul­tur­al prod­uct as earth-shattering.
They can be in some cas­es but i’ve nev­er seen their music as an attempt to be.
I was born 20 years after Zep­pelin’s prime, so to me, Zep’s lyrics did­n’t real­ly sub­vert any cul­tur­al or soci­etal views I had. So many of their famous songs are about find­ing a girl or are rather vague in their lyrics, so even if Zep­pelin was part of a hip­pie counter-cul­ture at some point, a lot of their lyrics don’t real­ly show it.

 

Quelle chanson de l’album Led Zeppelin IV a les paroles qui correspondent le mieux à la musique ?
Stair­way to Heav­en, about the hero’s jour­ney. The sto­ry of the hero’s jour­ney match­es with the pro­gres­sion of the song
No Quar­ter  The song’s eerie tones and swirls match the story.
Going To Cal­i­for­nia. The song talks about leav­ing his woman and town to trav­el to Cal­i­for­nia to see this oth­er woman. And he describes the lady in the song, in which the lady in Cal­i­for­nia seems more peace­ful than the lady that the man is already with. The music in the song is too peace­ful with the gui­tar and mandolin(I do believe). To me the music for this song would be great music to lis­ten to while trav­el­ing ; espe­cial­ly if you hope to find some­thing better.
Going to Cal­i­for­nia due to it’s bit­ter­sweet, acoustic, nos­tal­gic sound
Going to CA.
Stair­way to Heav­en. Lyrics tell a bit of a sto­ry and it flows to becom­ing a more intense sto­ry along with the music which goes from folksy to hard rock
Stair­way To Heav­en : The music accel­er­ates, to fit with the lyrics.
Going to Cal­i­for­nia. The mys­ti­cal mood set by the music mesh­es very well with the lyrics
Stair­way to Heav­en, the obvi­ous choice. This song defined the entire band using beau­ti­ful poet­ic lyrics while a nice slow melody played. Even when the song picks up and Jim­my Page kicks on the dis­tor­tion, the lyrics remain to be poet­ic and tell a story
Going to Cal­i­for­nia. I feel that both the lyrics and music have for­lorn, but hope­ful feeling.
Bat­tle of Evermore
Stair­way to heav­en, the song com­plete­ly changes depend­ing on the mood giv­en by the lyrics
When The Lev­ee Breaks
Stair­way to Heav­en.  A masterpiece.
Bat­tle of Ever­more  The man­dolin real­ly sets the mood of the medieval era. Sandy Den­ny’s vocals along with the man­dolin con­veys a bat­tle going on
It’s Stair­way. No jus­ti­fi­ca­tion needed
Not at this time
« Rock & Roll » as a back-to-basic blues-rock romp where Plant details want­i­ng to get back to rock­ing and rolling with Page wail­ing away on a clas­sic blues motif.  « The Bat­tle of Ever­more » as a fan­ta­sy sound­track epic — with very folksy and oth­er­world­ly melodies played over acoustic gui­tar and mandolin.
Going to Cal­i­for­nia. Emu­lates the west coast mood perfectly.
Stair­way to heav­en. If you look at the audio files of the music it lit­er­al­ly looks like a stairway
When the Lev­ee Breaks.  It is pon­der­ous and threat­en­ing, and I can pic­ture myself watch­ing and wait­ing to see if the flood will come to devour me
Bat­tle of ever­more. Very myth­i­cal and adven­tur­ous music that pairs with lyrics of leg­endary battle
Black Dog because the lyrics talk about danc­ing and pas­sion and the instru­ments por­tray the same kind of feel.
Stair­way to Heav­en giv­en it’s range of inten­si­ty through­out the song, main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent­ly increas­ing dynam­ic, both lyri­cal­ly and musically.
When the Lev­ee breaks. The music con­veys a sense of urgency, and helps move the nar­ra­tive of the situation
Stair­way to heav­en  The con­clu­sive lyrics match the cli­max of the song
When the lev­ee breaks
I belive black dog, because when the instru­ments stop the lyrics start, and then when they end the instru­ments start again and like that
Stair­way to Heav­en- the feel of the lyrics and the instru­ments is just, holy/heavenly it sounds like a slow bal­lad and then slow­ly moves onto a rock phase full of hope and joy
Stair­way to heav­en, heav­en­ly lyrics heav­en­ly music
I would say The Bat­tle of Ever­more, but my thoughts regard­ing why are a bit too neb­u­lous to explain. I guess I think it’s because the music sounds much like a medieval battle ?
Going to cal­i­for­nia. Beau­ti­ful and reflective
Rock & Roll. The clues in the name
Stair­way to heav­en, although it’s A gener­ic and stereo­typ­i­cal answer stair­way just has a way that makes it so renowned — the pro­gres­sion of the instru­ments along with the vocals is so well done
Dazed and con­fused. Not just the con­tent of the lyrics but also the voice and the haunt­ing sooth­ing calm­ness yet rage in the background
Rock and Roll.  It’s just a no non­sense rock song with lyrics that don’t real­ly make sense. The gui­tar and drums per­fect­ly match the lyrics. It’s just fun and awesome.
This is a very hard ques­tion, as most of the songs fit the descrip­tion.  I’d have to go with Bat­tle of Ever­more, with its fan­ta­sy lyrics match­ing very well with its music.
Either « rock n roll » or « stair­way to heav­en ». Rock n roll sim­ply because it’s loud, fast, and fun, and fea­tures that sig­na­ture rock/blues shuf­fle. Stair­way to heav­en though is a whole dif­fer­ent beast. It’s long, slow­ly builds up, and fea­tures dreamy acoustic gui­tar work and horns to give you the feel­ing you real­ly are on a stair­way to heaven.
When the Lev­ee Breaks, get the gen­er­al vibe of what the lyrics/story is but it’s real­ly rein­forced by the music (ie, har­mon­i­ca get­ting more and more out-of-sync/dis­tort­ed)
Stair­way. The slow start, is nice, the end­ing is amaz­ing, and plants lyrics accom­pa­ny it so well
I think « Black Dog » has the best lyrics to match their music. It’s about a girl, but it’s very direct or insane­ly obvi­ous, which is like most of their music. From an instru­men­tal stand­point, it has a lot of the things you’d expect from Led Zep­pelin, Bon­ham’s strong drum­ming, Page’s gui­tar riffs, Jones » bass line, and Plan­t’s clas­sic voice. I think they’re music also match­es with what they sing, so the inten­si­ty of long­ing for this woman in « Black Dog » is pret­ty sim­i­lar to the feel­ing and vibe you get from oth­er songs with sim­i­lar emotions.
« rock and roll » because, well it’s catchy and makes me want to dance, just like rock and roll should
Bat­tle of Evermore
Stair­way to heav­en, the slow build up of this women and the way the world is to an explo­sive reveal and sub­se­quent discovery
Black Dog because there’s a pow­er­ful vocal line fol­lowed by an equal­ly pow­er­ful gui­tar riff. It’s hard to explain but I just feel like the lyrics and music match up real­ly well
I tried real­ly, real­ly hard not to say Stair­way to Heav­en, but its « the » answer. I can­not fath­om there being bet­ter lyrics to those 12 string arpeg­gios, and I can’t imag­ine bet­ter accom­pa­ni­ment to such com­plex, evoca­tive lyrics.
The Bat­tle of Ever­more — it is majes­tic and grandiose, just like the music of LZIV
When the lev­ee breaks. That heavy drum beat, the icon­ic riffs, so much pow­er and emo­tion in the music to go with the lyrics. I feel like I can pic­ture a mas­sive wall of water burst­ing through and tak­ing out a whole vil­lage as LZ blasts their music from a safe point over­look­ing the rapids
The Bat­tle of Ever­more. The lyrics sounds kind of mys­ti­cal and I think that the music def­i­nite­ly match­es up with the feel of the lyrics.
Going to California
I sup­pose Stair­way To Heaven.
Rock and Roll is one exam­ple. A clas­sic 50’s Amer­i­can-esque tribute.
Going to Cal­i­for­nia.  The music is soft and soul­ful, and the addi­tion of the Man­dolin pro­vides an extra lay­er of soft­ness.  The song is about long­ing and yearn­ing to be some­where else and with some­where else.  The music con­veys that emotion
The Bat­tle of Ever­more. The song trans­ports you musi­cal­ly into a world unlike the one you are from. The lyrics then go on with an adven­ture through the wilds of mid­dle-earth. Feels like read­ing a fan­ta­sy nov­el but in song form.
Rock And Roll  The lyrics are fair­ly straight­for­ward and the song is a fair­ly straight­for­ward, but great, rock track.
Stair­way to Heav­en When the lev­ee breaks
Going to Cal­i­for­nia. It has incred­i­bly som­bre music, accom­pa­nied by even more som­bre lyrics.
When the Lev­ee Breaks — the har­mon­i­ca, the drums, Robert wail­ing and Jim­my duel­ing right along with him. The music sets the feel for « it be that way some­times » lyric where the singer moves through dif­fer­ent emo­tions but ulti­mate­ly are resigned to their fate, and the world keeps rolling on with or with­out you.
When the lev­ee breaks lyrics real­ly match­es the music, because of the loud drums, the har­mon­i­ca play­ing in the back­ground. It sounds like a storm is coming.
Stair­way To Heav­en is kin­da like one big descrip­tion of Led Zep­plin music
When The Lev­ee Breaks  The lyrics talk about lev­ees break­ing dur­ing flood­ing, while the sludgy and dirty music accom­pa­ny­ing it gives the per­fect visu­al paint­ing of the flood­ed out wasteland
Going to Cal­i­for­nia   The melody and the lyrics are beau­ti­ful and poet­ic. They match perfectly.
Stair­way to heav­en, fits the mys­ti­cal nature of the story
Going to Cal­i­for­nia, it’s a hope­ful song about a new start and the music feels like it’s climb­ing which makes it feel hope­ful as well, they fit well together
Black Dog. The lyrics are sex­u­al and Led Zep­pelin is grouped with sexuality.
Misty Moun­tain Hop. I can’t explain why.
Stair­way to Heav­en. The songs starts out slow and grad­u­al­ly increas­es in speed and vol­ume, like a stair­way climbing.
Stair­way to Heav­en, the shift­ing tone of the music fol­lows the sim­i­lar shift­ing of the lyrics. I also think that the oth­er songs have very cohe­sive music and lyrics.
Zep­pelin’s music tran­scends gen­res, going from blues to funk to folk to coun­try.  IV reflects that, with ener­getic songs, soft­er bal­lads, and epics.  If I had to choose I would pick Stair­way to Heav­en because it is the song that rep­re­sents their discog­ra­phy as a whole, being the most famous ; besides, it is the most diverse, going from bal­lad to heav­ier rock and back again.  How­ev­er, the song I think real­ly rep­re­sents Zep­pelin is Kash­mir — the hyp­not­ic riff, heavy drums, East­ern sound, and sto­ries of their trav­els in Morocco.
When the lev­ee breaks  This song’s sad and wor­ry­ing lyrics are reflect­ed in the dark tone.
It might be clicheed to say so, but Stair­way to Heav­en. The way the song builds from a sim­ple riff with rel­a­tive­ly easy lyrics, to the intro­duc­tion of more instru­men­ta­tion about halfway through match­es the more philo­soph­i­cal lyrics, and the final stan­za blus­ters through some non­sense about the lady we all know who, if we just lis­ten, will tell us the truth fits per­fect­ly with a gui­tar solo.
I’m not sure
Hmm­m­mm  Rock n Roll has that 50s rock n roll style piano which real­ly dri­ves the point home.  Stair­way to Heav­en has a lot of acoustic gui­tars, flute, and more to real­ly bring out the lyrics about nature.  When the Lev­ee Breaks real­ly takes me to the South­ern Unit­ed States with its har­mon­i­ca and bluesy ele­ments.  One of those 3, I’m not sure which.

 

Jethro Tull a raconté de nombreux types d’histoires au cours de sa carrière : la vie de marginaux (sans-abri, fermiers dont la propriété a été expropriée), les luttes contre les institutions dominantes telles que l’Église d’Angleterre, les rencontres romantiques et sexuelles, puis les histoires de la guerre froide dans les années 80, etc. Personnellement, associez-vous plus étroitement Jethro Tull à l’un de ces « types d’histoires » (ou à d’autres) que vous avez entendus dans leur musique ? Pensez-vous que l’un d’entre eux corresponde spécifiquement à ce que vous percevez comme l’esprit du groupe ? 
Aqualung, the lyrics match the band’s sound (and Ian Ander­son­’s voice).
Men­tal illness
Yes. For me Jethro Tull is at it’s core a band about folk lore, nature and ecol­o­gy, and the tril­o­gy of albums Songs from the Woods, Heavy Hors­es and Stormwatch rep­re­sent the spir­it of the band.
I asso­ciate indi­vid­ual albums very strong­ly with the sto­ry-types that dom­i­nate them- out­casts and anti­cler­i­cal sen­ti­ment on Aqualung, com­ing of age and becom­ing an adult with Thick as a Brick, pas­toral­ism and an earthy sex­u­al­i­ty with Songs from the Wood. But I don’t think there’s a par­tic­u­lar « true » or dom­i­nant under­ly­ing sto­ry-type to the band’s out­put ; rather, I think the spir­it of the band’s work (and Ian Ander­son­’s lyrics) is human­ism and an empa­thy for oth­ers- insti­tu­tions or soci­ety as a whole are often por­trayed as unjust, but indi­vid­u­als are almost always treat­ed with sympathy.
I don’t real­ly asso­ciate Jethro Tull with a sin­gle sto­ry type because of how expan­sive and var­ied they have been over the decades. They aren’t just one type of music, but many.
No, I think they have such a wide range of sto­ries it is too hard to pin them down.
I don’t real­ly asso­ciate them with one or anoth­er sto­ry-type.  I find Ian Ander­son to be a good sto­ry teller gen­er­al­ly, and I notice that most of the JT albums (as well as his solo albums) have themes or are con­cept albums, but I am a fan of the entire cat­a­logue and don’t asso­ciate them with any par­tic­u­lar type of story.
The sto­ries about cli­mate change because they were told a long time ago but are very very rel­e­vant in this day and age, almost prophet­ic, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing those sto­ries and dis­cus­sions weren’t near­ly so com­mon decades ago.
I asso­ciate Jethro Tull more with sto­ries about work­ing class lives in the UK.  I feel like a lot of their lyrics (espe­cial­ly from the 60s and 70s) could be told from the per­spec­tive of an aver­age per­son try­ing to live their life as best they can.  They could be about their strug­gles, rela­tion­ships, mem­o­ries, etc.
No, I think that when Ian write music he write about sto­ry’s that inter­est­ing to him and by that inter­est­ing to every­one. What’s the spir­it of jethro tull is not the sto­ry’s but the music behind it
As Aqualung was very influ­en­tial, I look at the lyrics as a con­trast between the actions and opin­ions of man and those of God as counterpoint.
I usu­al­ly asso­ciate them with that sort of stuff. When I think of their lyrics I always resort to thick as a brick or just any­thing going against the « institution »

 

On pourrait dire que Springsteen a eu des époques « narratives » distinctes (bien que se chevauchant parfois) : des escapades d’adolescents dans ses premières œuvres, des histoires de travailleurs, de criminels dans Nebraska, des histoires de mariage dans Tunnel of Love… Tous ces axes narratifs sont entourés de styles et de genres musicaux différents dans sa discographie. À cet égard, y a‑t-il une chanson (ou un album, ou même une époque) de Springsteen qui vous semble particulièrement intéressante en tant qu’univers sonore ? 
No idea what you are asking
I’m not real­ly sure what a son­ic sto­ry­world is. I guess many of the songs on Born to Run share the same theme of get­ting away from the same old life.
Yes, definete­ly. Almost every song of his.
Each album makes sense as a sto­ry world, but the most con­cise would have to be either Born to Run or Nebras­ka.  Born to Run has often been described as a series of vignettes tak­ing place on the same day in New Jer­sey.  Each sto­ry is relat­ed both musi­cal­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly.  The album as a whole tells a sto­ry of teenage rebel­lion and the desire to expe­ri­ence the world and get out of a dead end town.  Nebras­ka is also con­struct­ed well.  The stripped down style of music lends itself nice­ly to the bare bones des­o­la­tion that awaits each of the char­ac­ters in each of the songs.
The Riv­er is pos­si­bly the best exam­ple of this. It takes a jour­ney from a young man dat­ing and try­ing for accep­tance in the fam­i­ly through mar­riage, careers and ulti­mate­ly death, with songs about love, sex, rock and roll in the 20 song album.
The price you pay
« Streets of fire », it feels like I’m in his shoes and the music real­ly feels as angry and frus­trat­ed as the char­ac­ter must be.
Almost any song off of the Wild The Inno­cent and the E Street Shuf­fle and Greet­ings from Aus­bury Park
I think they all mesh in their own way, but I think two albums par­tic­u­lar­ly make sense as son­ic sto­ry worlds. The ram­bling lyrics and youth­ful life sto­ries real­ly fit with the shifts in musi­cal style and tone on The Wild, The Inno­cent, & The E Street Shuf­fle. And the dark and brood­ing lyrics about dis­sat­is­fac­tion and search­ing for mean­ing on Dark­ness on the Edge of Town fit with the gui­tar-for­ward sound of the album.
Yes, I would say songs like Glo­ry days, Out­law Pete, John­ny 99, etc.
I strong­ly iden­ti­fy with the albums and songs that reflect class issues.
This is why i love him. Depend­ing where I have been in life he has an album for it. Right now I am in a tun­nel of love and dev­ils and dust place.
Yeah you could def­i­nite­ly argue that. Its sim­i­lar to an author writ­ing dif­fer­ent books about dif­fer­ent things.
Yes, absolute­ly. I believe that almost all of Spring­steen’s music fits into the same sto­ry­telling world. Each song builds more and more on this world so that the more you lis­ten, the more you under­stand the peo­ple in this world and they’re struggles.
His ear­li­er albums when the songs were most­ly about love, escape, and being dis­pleased in gen­er­al form a cohe­sive sound to me that changes as he does. The loud strum­ming gui­tar, accom­pa­ny­ing E Street Band, and strained vocals are some spe­cif­ic aspects of this era.
Yes, par­tic­u­lar­ly albums. I believe Spring­steen makes a point of try­ing to put togeth­er albums that tell over­ar­ch­ing sto­ries, lyri­cal­ly and musi­cal­ly e.g. Born to Run with Thun­der Road­’s breezy open­ing and Jun­gle­land’s cathar­tic clos­ing- though the lyri­cal nar­ra­tives are gen­er­al­ly a lot clear­er to me, per­son­al­ly. In terms of songs, he has plen­ty of son­ic epics espe­cial­ly in the first part of his career, but some of my favourite under­rat­ed musi­cal sto­ries are actu­al­ly arrange­ments from his acoustic tours where the instru­ment is play­ing some­thing very repet­i­tive, which works very well with songs about peo­ple stuck in their ter­ri­ble cir­cum­stances e.g. Mur­der Incor­po­rat­ed from the 1996 Tom Joad tour.
Dark­ness on the edge of town and the Riv­er are quite sim­i­lar in theme I think. He matured after his ini­tial suc­cess and began to tell sad, work­ing class sto­ries and write more about mature themes rather than teenage get­aways. For me that era in the late 70s defines him as an artist and real­ly estab­lished him
Many, most recent­ly West­ern Stars where the music of Lau­rel Canyon infus­es the sto­ries of his west coast characters.

 

Joni Mitchell n’est pas une exception parmi les chanteurs folk contemporains (comme Bob Dylan) en ce sens qu’elle raconte souvent des histoires d’amour, ou plutôt des histoires de relations éphémères. Selon vous, qu’est-ce qui ressort du regard poétique de Mitchell sur ce type d’histoire ? Par exemple, le considérez-vous comme alternatif puisqu’il représente un point de vue féminin sur cette matrice narrative traditionnelle ? 
Yeah, I think that back in the 60s and 70s it would cer­tain­ly have been a con­trast with the typ­i­cal male-dom­i­nat­ed song­writ­ing. How­ev­er, most mod­ern folk music (that I lis­ten to at least) is actu­al­ly writ­ten by female lyri­cists, so I don’t think that holds today.  Joni is just real­ly good at what she does. Sure, every­one can write love songs but few can do it with Joni’s skill. At her best she was bet­ter than any­body, man or woman. I would draw atten­tion to her impres­sion­ist song­writ­ing, star­tling­ly cre­ative metaphors, and the sheer hon­esty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of her lyrics.
First of all, her use of lan­guage to con­vey imagery is excep­tion­al. I believe it is the qual­i­ty of her writ­ing rather than any for­mal considerations.
I do think that the female point of view is an essen­tial part of the expe­ri­ence.  Also, since it is no secret as to her var­i­ous rela­tion­ships with high-pro­file men, her non­cha­lance towards sex­u­al rela­tion­ships is some­thing that might not be over­ly typ­i­cal of female singer-song­writ­ers.  The trag­ic aspects of her life before find­ing fame also make for some very heart-wrench­ing songs, so her life expe­ri­ence is a key aspect of her song­writ­ing as well.  This could also be tied into songs like « Carey » that depict her time spent liv­ing in Greece.
She real­ly delves into the mys­ti­cism and dis­sects every emo­tion — good and bad, which is wrapped up in love and attach­ment or the lack thereof
Joni is incred­i­bly inde­pen­dent, and she does rep­re­sent a refresh­ing female point of view on the nature of fleet­ing rela­tion­ships which I think is impor­tant. I can’t say much regard­ing the accu­ra­cy of her por­tray­al to my per­son­al expe­ri­ence because I am too young.  I don’t lis­ten to too many of Bob Dylan’s songs, but I find Joni’s lyrics to be much more vis­cer­al than his are, and I find an eas­i­er time under­stand­ing the emo­tions behind her lyrics as com­pared to Dylan’s.
The way she writes. The ideas and expres­sion in her lyrics
Her orig­i­nal­i­ty, her turn of phrase. I nev­er thought of her as alter­na­tive, but I felt that she was only mine, because any time I played her music for some­one, they hat­ed it. I always lis­ten alone. In the past if some­one said they love JM, I would ask « what song is your favorite » if it was Court and Spark, I would think them as entry lev­el Joni. If some­one men­tions lyrics of  Hiss­ing of Sum­mer Lawns. I would know that they knew her a bit better.
It’s part­ly a female view ; part­ly a more poet­ic alter­na­tive to typ­i­cal banal lyrics ; and part­ly just a dif­fer­ent view based on her unique expe­ri­ences and her per­cep­tions of the world and relationships.

 

Neil Young a de nombreux sujets de prédilection : les misfits, la politique américaine, la colonisation, mais aussi la nostalgie ou les ruptures amoureuses. Comment situez-vous Young dans la tradition de l’artiste politiquement engagé ? Pensez-vous que ses chansons les plus mémorables sont (ou devraient être) les plus 
I think part of the rea­son I con­nect­ed with Neil Young was the my polit­i­cal ideals aligned with his at the age I dis­cov­ered him. I also think that his music has helped mold my ideals as i’ve got­ten old­er.  He has down­right polit­i­cal songs (Cam­paign­er, Ohio, South­ern Man, Alaba­ma) but even some oth­er songs are sneaky polit­i­cal with­out being obvi­ous (Don’t Let It Bring You Down, Ambu­lance Blues, After The Gold Rush) so I’d say the best songs are real­ly just what­ev­er songs you can tell the artist real­ly cares about.
I think h
Not for me per­son­al­ly, but I under­stand how they could be for others
Neil speaks his mind and says what is there. Some­times that’s polit­i­cal and some­times it’s not. Some of his most famous and mem­o­rable songs (ie Ohio, Alaba­ma, Nee­dle) are polit­i­cal and mem­o­rable for good rea­son. He has plen­ty of non-polit­i­cal songs that are mem­o­rable for good rea­son as well. Any­thing that comes from the heart, touch­es the lis­ten­er, and has a killer riff, man.
Absolute­ly. It’s the most sin­cere form of his music, in my opin­ion. It most intense­ly reflects Neil’s per­son­al life.
Neil is an artist with strong polit­i­cal incli­na­tions and the abil­i­ty to occa­sion­al­ly cap­ture those feel­ings in song with great effect. Songs like Ohio and South­ern Man break through tra­di­tion­al box­es placed around « polit­i­cal songs » and have achieved a clas­sic, almost time­less, sta­tus and mass appeal while dis­cussing seri­ous polit­i­cal issues.   That said, I do not con­sid­er Neil a polit­i­cal artist in the same way as some­body like Phil Ochs, but rather an artist with a polit­i­cal streak. While Neil has lots of polit­i­cal songs, many often aren’t con­sid­ered polit­i­cal (Rockin in the free world), good obvi­ous­ly polit­i­cal songs (cam­paign­er), and not so good polit­i­cal songs (the entire Liv­ing with War album). Ulti­mate­ly, I think Neil’s most mem­o­rable songs are either not polit­i­cal or are not viewed by the greater lis­ten­ing pub­lic as political.
I despise liv­ing with war and any of his overt protests songs, but more sub­tle ones like cam­paign­er and those that touch on gen­er­al top­ics like rock­ing in the free world, Poc­a­hon­tas, etc are great. Ohio is kin­da a weird one to cat­e­go­rize… I have trou­ble think­ing of it as an overt protest song although many peo­ple do. I love the song, and the music itself is very fitting
I find Neil Young to be one of the few musi­cians (par­tic­u­lar­ly from the 60s) to still be « aware » or hip to pol­i­tics. Neil Young nev­er became one of those musi­cians who got more con­ser­v­a­tive and irrel­e­vant as they got old­er.   I con­sid­er Young to be one of the more polit­i­cal song­writ­ers for sure. Songs like « Ohio » and « South­ern Man » still sound rel­e­vant. I think those are right­ful­ly among his most well-known songs.

 

Une personne du subreddit Led Zeppelin a écrit dans une réponse à cette enquête que leurs paroles étaient « des paroles standard de blues/rock : les femmes qui ont fait le mal, la musique rock est géniale, et cetera, avec une référence mystique occasionnelle ». Comment pensez-vous que cela s’applique à Deep Purple, en tant qu’autre groupe définissant un genre ? 
Not as much as Led Zep­pelin in my opnion, since Deep Pur­ple more often takes trips down more abstract and mys­tic dimen­sions, such as in Son of Alerik, Child in Time and Per­fect Strangers.
It is for sure a sim­il­iar style to deep purple
Deep Pur­ple did­n’t real­ly pay a lot of atten­tion to express much mean­ing in their lyrics (Ian Gillan says in an inter­view that the most impor­tant thing about a lyric is that they sound goo)d.

 

Qu’est-ce qui a joué le plus grand rôle dans la construction de l’imaginaire de Maiden : ses paroles narratives, historiques et mythiques, ou l’identité visuelle du groupe (pochettes d’albums, artworks d’Eddy, etc.) ? En tant que fan dévoué, qu’est-ce qui est aujourd’hui le plus important pour toi ? 
I like how Steve Har­ris writes songs about his read­ing, watching,(books, movies, his­to­ry) habits. Bruce and Adri­an aren’t shab­by either. I don’t lis­ten to enough of their new­er con­tent to form an opin­ion about Jannik.
The lyrics : the front covers/Eddies typ­i­cal­ly relate to spe­cif­ic songs or the theme of the album track, where­as the lyrics cov­er a huge vari­ety of top­ics and themes.
Nei­ther, the qual­i­ty of the music is first and fore­most. Dur­ing con­certs, fans will even chant along to the gui­tar melodies before the first verse even begins.  After that, I would say the lyrics are more impor­tant. Fans love the his­to­ry songs, such as Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Troop­er, Alexan­der the Great, and many many more.  The art­work seems to work bet­ter for mar­ket­ing but has no rela­tion to the music. If the music was ter­ri­ble, Maid­en would be con­sid­ered anoth­er clas­sic band past their prime that just hap­pens to have a real­ly good mar­ket­ing department.
Both play equal­ly big roles in the Iron Maid­en expe­ri­ence. Impos­si­ble to pick which one is more important.
Thei rvi­su­al iden­ti­ty prob­a­bly played a big­ger role in cre­at­ing their mythos, how­ev­er i believe their focus on sto­ry­telling and historical/fantasy top­ics made peo­ple become more invest­ed in their whole iden­ti­ty.   As a fan, their nar­ra­tive lyrics are def­i­nite­ly more impor­tant to me.
The nar­ra­tive and musi­cal iden­ti­ty of Eddie. Eddie cre­at­ed an image of the band while the nar­ra­tive and music kept me hooked.
His­tor­i­cal and myth­i­cal lyrics play the biggest role but all the var­i­ous pic­tures of Eddie goes a long way to estab­lish­ing the imag­i­nary world. Almost every song has its own Eddie art­work that sets the scene.
It’s the music pri­mar­i­ly.  If the nar­ra­tive was removed and only the music and imagery were left we’d still have recog­nis­able Maid­en.  If either of the oth­ers were changed we wouldn’t.
The visu­al iden­ti­ty is def­i­nite­ly part of it but the most impor­tant thing for me are the his­tor­i­cal and myth­i­cal motives. There are sev­er­al instances where my lis­ten­ing to Iron Maid­en have made me more knowl­edge­able in school as well as inter­est­ed in the sub­jects they are about.
Themes of war, reli­gion, history/myth and life and death.  All is impor­tant to me and the band’s context.
I’d say they all had rough­ly an equal role, but the nar­ra­tive is more impor­tant to me than the visuals.
The lyrics are always very easy to fol­low because of Bruce Dick­in­sons incred­i­ble dic­tion. Also the instru­men­tal parts rep­re­sent the emo­tions felt by the sto­ry teller at the time and add extra mean­ing to the song. The art­work and aura they’ve built up is cool and the songs are always long enough to tell a full story.
The music is impor­tant but so is the album cov­ers. The cov­ers is what sets the tone. Like a book cover.
The nar­ra­tive
The art­work def­i­nite­ly helps things along. How­ev­er, the most impor­tant com­po­nent is their live pre­sen­ta­tion in which songs « take life » so to speak (fear of the dark dance of death and sign of the cross come to mind). As a fan, I would say their longevi­ty and their vari­ety in their mate­r­i­al is what defines them today, along with their stage pres­ence and passion
When I was young def­i­nite­ly the imagery and lyrics. Now the music part is more interesting.
Maid­en’s music and and lyrics feel to mee like they’re inter­twinedm fused like a whole thing. Not just their thoug. Eddy and art cov­ers is a defin­i­tive 2nd place.
The for­mer. Lyrics are fan­tas­tic and tell great sto­ries while fol­low­ing themes.  Sec­ond would be the musi­cian­ship,  and third would be visu­al imagery/identity
Steve Har­ris » song­writ­ing, sev­er­al draw­ing artist’s imag­i­na­tion while draw­ing the cov­er pho­tos. For me the more impor­tant aspect is the lyrics in songs.

 

Qualitatif

De quel instru­ment jouez-vous ?

Quelles sont les chan­sons dont les paroles vous ont marqué ?

Avez-vous un type de parole préféré ?

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chan­son pour enten­dre une his­toire ? (répons­es positives)

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chan­son pour enten­dre une his­toire ? (répons­es négatives)

Vous sou­venez-vous d’une écoute col­lec­tive ayant changé votre per­cep­tion d’une chan­son ? Si oui, laquelle ?

Vous sou­venez-vous d’une écoute col­lec­tive ayant changé votre per­cep­tion d’une chan­son ? Si non, pourquoi ?

Vous sou­venez-vous d’une nou­velle écoute indi­vidu­elle ayant changé votre per­cep­tion d’une chan­son ? Si oui, laquelle ?

Vous sou­venez-vous d’une nou­velle écoute indi­vidu­elle ayant changé votre per­cep­tion d’une chan­son ? Si non, pourquoi ?

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chan­son dont l’histoire ou les paroles vous ont dérangé. Si oui, laquelle ?

Avez-vous déjà écouté une chan­son dont l’histoire ou les paroles vous ont dérangé. Si non, pourquoi ?

Pou­vez-vous résumer Eleanor Rig­by des Beatles ?

Led Zep­pelin (1)

Led Zep­pelin (2)

Jethro Tull

Bruce Spring­steen

Joni Mitchell

Neil Young

Deep Pur­ple

Iron Maid­en