Bonnie Raitt's Cover of Randall Bramlett's "Used To Rule the World"

A great blues ode to the fall of aged winners:

Then listen to his intro anecdote about her request to change one line:

I heard Raitt's cover first. Interestingly, the line I think is best is the one Bonnie Raitt changed. Original: Miss Cocktail Dress, looking in the bathroom sink, did anybody find the ring? Raitt's: Miss Cocktail Dress, standing at the bathroom sink, looking for a back way out. The new line is so much more pathetic and desperate, the difference between misplacing something (first version and a theme in the song) and an unfortunate/bad choice (the second), a potent image that suggests a hope gone wrong set within an implied bigger failure. Subtle, but some serious lyric chops there.

Bob Dylan's The times They Are a-Changin' on his 70th Birthday

Dylan composed and recorded this in 1963 when he was twenty-two years old. Some of his commentary on the song makes sound as if he was working on intuition, not really getting what it was about to some degree. It's simple musically, though I dig the rhyme scheme. But man, for all its stark simplicity Dylan instinctively nailed the sea change that was in the air and coming.



Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's naming.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Rising narcissism in popular song lyrics?

NYT
April 25, 2011
A Generation’s Vanity, Heard Through Lyrics
By JOHN TIERNEY

A couple of years ago, as his fellow psychologists debated whether narcissism was increasing, Nathan DeWall heard Rivers Cuomo singing to a familiar 19th-century melody. Mr. Cuomo, the lead singer and guitarist for the rock band Weezer, billed the song as “Variations on a Shaker Hymn.”

Where 19th-century Shakers had sung “ ’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,” Mr. Cuomo offered his own lyrics: “I’m the meanest in the place, step up, I’ll mess with your face.” Instead of the Shaker message of love and humility, Mr. Cuomo sang over and over, “I’m the greatest man that ever lived.”

The refrain got Dr. DeWall wondering: “Who would actually sing that aloud?” Mr. Cuomo may have been parodying the grandiosity of other singers — but then, why was there so much grandiosity to parody? Did the change from “Simple Gifts” to “Greatest Man That Ever Lived” exemplify a broader trend?

Now, after a computer analysis of three decades of hit songs, Dr. DeWall and other psychologists report finding what they were looking for: a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music. As they hypothesized, the words “I” and “me” appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there’s been a corresponding decline in “we” and “us” and the expression of positive emotions.

“Late adolescents and college students love themselves more today than ever before,” Dr. DeWall, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky, says. His study covered song lyrics from 1980 to 2007 and controlled for genre to prevent the results from being skewed by the growing popularity of, say, rap and hip-hop.

Defining the personality of a generation with song lyrics may seem a bit of a reach, but Dr. DeWall points to research done by his co-authors that showed people of the same age scoring higher in measures of narcissism on some personality tests. The extent and meaning of this trend have been hotly debated by psychologists, some of whom question the tests’ usefulness and say that young people today aren’t any more self-centered than those of earlier generations. The new study of song lyrics certainly won’t end the debate, but it does offer another way to gauge self-absorption: the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Read the full story HERE in the NYT.

Controversy Over Changing Lyrics of Canadian National Anthem (O Canada)

CBC News

O Canada lyrics to be reviewed
Last Updated: Wednesday, March 3, 2010 | 6:28 PM ET

Get ready to memorize new words to the national anthem.

Parliament is to be asked to review the "original gender-neutral wording of the national anthem," says the throne speech delivered by Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean on Wednesday.

O Canada includes the lyrics "true patriot love in all thy sons command," and there may be interest in changing that line to something more inclusive.

O Canada, with music composed by Calixa Lavallée in 1880, became the national anthem in 1980, replacing God Save the Queen.

Its English lyrics have been adapted several times over the years, but the current version is based on a poem written in 1908 by Stanley Weir.

It begins: "O Canada Our home and native land! True patriot love thou dost in us command. We see thee rising fair, dear land, The True North strong and free."

The official English version now in use incorporates changes recommended in 1968 by a joint committee of MPs and senators that added the lines "from far and wide" and "God keep our land glorious and free!"

The surprise proposal to review the lyrics had parliamentary observers buzzing. The throne speech gave no indication what prompted the plan.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said the initiative to change the lyrics is the kind of "symbolic gesture" the Conservative government makes when it doesn't want to do anything real.

"Anything that makes a national anthem more gender-sensitive is a good thing," he told CBC News.

"But, I mean, no disrespect to those who feel strongly on this issue, but, for heaven's sake, we have some very important challenges and every time the government is asked to do something real, it does something symbolic.

"There's lots of things to do for women that are more important than changing the words of the national anthem, just as there are lots of things to do for pensioners and seniors that are more important than having a Seniors Day."

********
O Canada official lyrics

O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise, The True North strong and free!

From far and wide, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free! O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee


And here is a story on the pushback.

Village Voice Worst Pop Lyric of 2008 Tournament

Personally, I think Lil Wayne and Ne-Yo were robbed. You can see the tournament-style bracket here.

Are excessive lyrics ruining pop music?

SLATE
Words Words Words
Are excessive lyrics ruining pop music?
By William Weir
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008, at 3:54 PM ET

Fifty years ago, Link Wray's "Rumble," a snarling instrumental, was banned by radio stations because programmers worried that the song's grinding distortion would incite teenage audiences to West Side Story-esque delinquency. Perhaps an overreaction, but at least this censorship showed a respect for the power of wordless music. Try getting your wordless tune on the radio today. From 1960 to 1974, 128 instrumentals reached the Top 20, while only 30 did from 1975 to 1990. And since? Five. These standouts are likely remembered only by smooth-jazz aficionados and soundtrack collectors: "Lily Was Here" by David A. Stewart and Candy Dulfer; Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen's remake of the Mission: Impossible theme; "Southampton" from Titanic; and Kenny G's "Forever in Love" and "Auld Lang Syne."

While wordless pop has disappeared from commercial radio, pop music has become ever more long-winded. The year-end top 10 songs from 1960 to 1969 have an average word count of 176. For the 1970s, the figure jumps to 244. In 2007, the average climbed to 436. The top 10 for the week of Feb. 2, 2008, features six songs over the 500-word mark. Chris Brown and T-Pain use 742 words in their "Kiss Kiss." While music can express what words cannot, music rarely gets a chance in contemporary pop, and certainly not in "Kiss Kiss." Except for the first two seconds, vocals fill the song's every moment. Entirely absent are instrumental phrasings that allow a song (and singers) to breathe. Guys, take a break.

In contrast, the Great American Songbook is a bible of pithiness. "Blue Moon," "Over the Rainbow," and "Embraceable You" all make their cases in fewer than 100 words. Will Smith, Kenny Chesney, Bon Jovi, and Beyoncé all have songs called "Summertime" yielding word counts three to five times as high as Gershwin's tune of the same name. They all have a similar message: "The livin' is easy." But with only 92 words, Gershwin says it best by letting the melody become part of the story. Done well, the song sounds like a hazy, slow summer day. In Smith's "Summertime," he recalls hanging out in Philly parks, in Mercedes-Benzes, and at a place called "The Plateau," where everybody goes. All I picture are the Fresh Prince's summers. They sound fun, but I want my own. Gershwin's lyrical economy makes room for our own dog-day memories. Instrumentals are even easier to personalize. With no lyrics to dictate my emotional response, Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" conforms to my mood. When it's playing on my stereo, just driving around assumes a cinematic brio.

In the contemporary radio landscape, instrumental blockbusters like Duane Eddy's "Peter Gunn" simply don't happen anymore. Considering the cultural impact they've had, that's a shame. The ubiquity of "Green Onions" by Booker T. & the M.G.'s (used in at least 15 movies and countless beer commercials) makes us forget just how good this swaggering and slightly dangerous-sounding piece is. Long before there were video games, the Tornados' "Telstar" sounded like one in 1962. The song, with noises supposedly from the first communication satellite (launched months prior), has the spirit of a world giddy about space exploration. Edgar Winter's jam "Frankenstein" (and his early version of a keytar) and the laid-back sounds of fluegelhornist Chuck Mangione are gold mines for students of the 1970s. "Axel F" from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and "Miami Vice Theme" (our most recent No. 1 instrumental) tell us much of what we need to know about the 1980s. Herbie Hancock gave hip-hop its watershed instrumental in 1983 with "Rockit"—the first time many people heard record scratching.

Science offers some clues, if not a smoking gun, in the music vs. lyrics debate. Neuroscientists believe that the brain uses a different system to store and process music than it does words. Not much research has been done on which affects us more, but an American University study published in the Psychology of Music in 2006 gives a slight edge to melody. When listening to happy or calm songs, subjects found that lyrics dulled the tunes' emotional kick. Words, however, enhanced emotional responses to angry and sad songs. When researchers mismatched the melodies and lyrics—sad words with happy music, etc.—melodies held more sway with participants' moods than lyrics. Possible real-world application (my theory): Of all the phenomenal singers who have tackled the "Star-Spangled Banner," Jimi Hendrix's tortured, celebratory, and wordless version remains the most emotionally layered.

I understand the appeal of the human voice, and I certainly can't begrudge anyone's joy at singing along in the car (unless I'm in it). But why such shabby treatment for the instrumental? Marketability. A band is practically faceless with no crooning front man. People still credit the Surfaris' "Wipe Out" to the Ventures, the Beach Boys, or, bizarrely, Morton Downey Jr. And it's not as if good instrumental music isn't still getting produced. Singerless combos emerged in big numbers in the 1990s, and instrumental buffs have their pick of genres: electronica, sprawling post-rock, cello metal. But even the danceable and hooky pop of Ratatat runs into the same wall: No singer means no airplay. The experimental but profoundly catchy Battles didn't break out until the group added vocals on 2007's Mirrored.

Here's another problem for the instrumental: Fancy a new song, but don't know the name? You can Google the chorus. But with no words to work with, you're reduced to humming the guitar part to friends and record-store clerks, hoping they'll recognize it. They won't. Music journalists also share some responsibility. Words are writers' friends—they're easier to critique than a musical phrase the reader can't hear (although hyperlinks change this a bit). Take Black Sabbath's "Iron Man": I can go on for quite a while about the title character's tragic circumstances, but it's the riff that raises the song to pioneering doom classic. For all of the riff's majestic awesomeness, though, I'm at a loss to describe it.

Finally, there's Bob Dylan, the man perhaps most responsible for the word/music power imbalance. With the releases of "Wipe Out" and Lonnie Mack's "Memphis" in 1963, things looked bright for the rock instrumental. Then came The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and his 564-word "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." That year, the New York Times likened his songs to "speeches delivered to guitar chording" and called him "an inspired poet." Two years later, the Times reported that everyone was copying him.
William Weir is a writer living in New Haven.