Metal songs that tried to be profound but were actually ignorant?

Temple of Blood wrote:

Dio's lyrics are just ridiculous for the most part but yeah, good call on "Stars".

Dio's lyrics weren't ignorant though. More like incomprehensible. Maybe pretentiously artistic, if you want to be more critical.

Then again, it's possible you could get a lot out of them if you have an imagination and take it all as metaphors, which I'm sure what he intended them to be. So you can follow the rainbow (find a better job), kill the king (fight your evil boss), slay the dragon (quit your job and go fishing, and catch the biggest damn salmon anybody's ever seen) or whatever you want it to mean to you personally.

Lari wrote:

Temple of Blood wrote:

Dio's lyrics are just ridiculous for the most part but yeah, good call on "Stars".

Dio's lyrics weren't ignorant though. More like incomprehensible. Maybe pretentiously artistic, if you want to be more critical.

Then again, it's possible you could get a lot out of them if you have an imagination and take it all as metaphors, which I'm sure what he intended them to be. So you can follow the rainbow (find a better job), kill the king (fight your evil boss), slay the dragon (quit your job and go fishing, and catch the biggest damn salmon anybody's ever seen) or whatever you want it to mean to you personally.

I take it you're not enjoying your job at the moment dude 

muckie wrote:

Lari wrote:

Another one that kind of fits here are all the European (usually German) bands that don't really know English. It's not that they are ignorant, they just mix up the words and it comes out sounding awkward. Like, is this song about empowering people to fight corruption, or about anal sex? "Plug a bomb in their ass". "Down on me". Is this song telling me about the evil that the devil does, or about oral sex?

One of my favourite bands is Mystic Prophecy, and in their lyrics malapropisms are the norm, not the exception.

Then again... maybe I got it all wrong? Maybe it's that ambiguity that makes them great. All those lame double entendres about sex that the English-speaking bands could ever come up with, well, none of them are quite as ambigous or deep as the lyrics German bands do come up with. Those German bands don't really even seem to be singing about sex. But still they are. Because they get inside your head with their broken English and make you think of all these things. Things that they probably wanted you to think about in the first place.

It's like that episode of the Simpsons when Marge is in a cooking contest and the Italian chef Luigi sabotages her.

Quote :

Marge: Stop, you're tainting my entry.
Luigi: Oh I'm so sorry. It was how you say, done with malice a forethought, yes?
Marge: You did it on purpose?
Luigi: No no no, my English is not so good, i was how you say, ruining your food so I win, yes?

German bands of this type also make fantastic covers. This being one of my favorites!

Fixed that link for you

Hadley wrote:

On what Sentinel said, i kind of find it odd that happily married rock stars like Alice Cooper or Jon Bon Jovi still write songs about heartbreak and breakups. While i understand that the songs are not meant to be autobiographical (or if they are, its likely inspired by past heartbreak with former girlfriends), its kind of odd to hear them sing these songs. Granted, this is something thats been going on in all forms of music since the first musician to write about heartbreak got married, but the point still stands.

I don't have a problem with that. You don't have to experience it right now to know how it feels. Or even have experienced it at all to imagine how it feels.

We'd never get historical songs about battles or war if you'd have to have been there. Musicians rarely are soldiers. Steve Harris didn't fight in the Crimean war (Trooper). James Hetfield never stepped on a land mine and lost his limbs, sight and all other senses (One).

I'm pretty sure that John Lennon was not actually a walrus.

Boris2008 wrote:

Lari wrote:

Temple of Blood wrote:

Dio's lyrics are just ridiculous for the most part but yeah, good call on "Stars".

Dio's lyrics weren't ignorant though. More like incomprehensible. Maybe pretentiously artistic, if you want to be more critical.

Then again, it's possible you could get a lot out of them if you have an imagination and take it all as metaphors, which I'm sure what he intended them to be. So you can follow the rainbow (find a better job), kill the king (fight your evil boss), slay the dragon (quit your job and go fishing, and catch the biggest damn salmon anybody's ever seen) or whatever you want it to mean to you personally.

I take it you're not enjoying your job at the moment dude 

I actually didn't even think of what I wrote there. But yeah, I'd say you're right.

When I listen to Dio, what I hear in the lyrics, the meaning of it all, it changes in time. A couple of years back I'd say this one song would be about standing up against the bully, or wooing a girl, or internal struggles or whatever. That's the beauty of lyrics like what Dio wrote. This song can be about anything you want it to be about. But when the song goes "Jimmy was down on his luck - he lost his job at the auto repair - wife is pregnant, mortgage is due", then yeah, you hear it the first time but that's it. That's a very specific story. But if his struggles involved a bunch of dragons instead of mortgage payments, it'd kind of leave it up to the listener to fill in the blanks. Because obviously dragons don't exist. What is that song really about?

DakotaRogers wrote:

First thing that came to mind was "What a Joke" by Deliverance.

Sure, it was ignorant back then as well, but it's especially cringeworthy today.

not at all. Great lyrics.
Sinners, atheists, antichristians would not like the lyrics though.

...or people with 3-digit IQs.

S.D. wrote:

...or people with 3-digit IQs.  

Sinners, atheists, and anti christians  would not like the lyrics - so that's everyone who has ever lived except Jesus then! 

S.D. wrote:

...or people with 3-digit IQs.  

Do you look down on any band that refrences God and Christianity, or just Deliverance? What is your opinion on Ultimatum's lyrics?

Troublezone wrote:

S.D. wrote:

...or people with 3-digit IQs.  

Do you look down on any band that refrences God and Christianity, or just Deliverance? What is your opinion on Ultimatum's lyrics?

That's a pretty massive leap! 

Ehhhhh. Fail. Wrong conclusion jumped at.

Boris2008 wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

S.D. wrote:

...or people with 3-digit IQs.  

Do you look down on any band that refrences God and Christianity, or just Deliverance? What is your opinion on Ultimatum's lyrics?

That's a pretty massive leap! 

How so? Both are Christian metal.

S.D. wrote:

Ehhhhh.  Fail.  Wrong conclusion jumped at.  

Didn't you imply that Deliverance's lyrics are disliked by people that have high IQs? As far as I know, Ultimatum is directly influenced by Deliverance and have similar lyrics.

I was referring to that one specific song, which is juvenile crap.

Everything else is your incorrect assumptions.

S.D. wrote:

I was referring to that one specific song, which is juvenile crap.  

Everything else is your incorrect assumptions.

In that case, nevermind.

S.D. wrote:

Of course many rock stars started out poor or lower middle class so it's not like it's a completely alien concept to them.  Just because your bank account adds a few extra zeroes doesn't mean you magically forget your upbringing.

Specific to the case of Queen, and I should say again I'm coming at this from the position of a pretty devoted fan, they were a band who toasted their audience with champagne even when they were young and poor.  There's something about a band with that image going, "OMG, DA STARVING CHILDRUN!" that rings false to my ears.  Maybe I'm being hyper-critical though.

Not to turn this into a political debate, but there's also something that rubs me the wrong way hardcore about having rich rockers preaching about "doing your part" to end poverty when, at best, I've been in the lower half of middle class all my life.  Tell you what, Bono (substitute whatever name you want here), YOU give away all your shinies and cash and then I'll take it on the chin and give some of mine away.  The politically active musicians who get laws passed that raise fees, taxes, etc. are really the evolved form of this b.s. as far as I'm concerned.  Nothing says "loving care" like collecting other peoples' money by force to fund your pet projects while you have four houses on three continents...

EDIT: I want to be clear, a musician telling a story lyrically doesn't bother me. Give me a character study that makes me feel for someone worse off than me - that's art and even if I don't like the execution, the spirit of it makes sense to me. The above is SPECIFICALLY targeted at rich bands with political agendas that are also voiced through rather ham-fisted emotional cheap shot songs. "Feed the World" got mentioned before - prime example.

Sorry, that got to be a bit of a rant.  Fortunately, most metal bands are still broke and angry, so we don't have to worry as much about this from our people.  

And before anyone gets too comfortable with the idea of "poetry belongs to X lyricists outside of metal," lest we forget, Lou Reed was one hell of a lyrical poet when he wanted to be.  Mix him with metal and we got "I am the table."

Witchfinder wrote:

Temple of Blood wrote:

I don't think all political slants in metal lyrics are juvenile but I am tempted to say that all the ones that thrash bands espoused in the 80s were.

For me, Sacred Reich is the perfect example of this.

Funny, Sacred Reich was the band I had in my head for 80s thrash political lyrics that I like.

I also enjoy the political musings of one Cyko Miko: "I'm not anti-Reagan, Reagan's anti-me. I'm not anti-anything, I just wanna be free!:

mlotek wrote:

DakotaRogers wrote:

First thing that came to mind was "What a Joke" by Deliverance.

Sure, it was ignorant back then as well, but it's especially cringeworthy today.

not at all. Great lyrics.
Sinners, atheists, antichristians would not like the lyrics though.

Yeah, cringeworthy indeed. I started checking Deliverance out a couple years ago, after pretty much ignoring anything called Christian metal for years. But when I got to "What A Joke", I was done with that band, particularly the part about "homos" trying to claim their lifestyle is not perverted.

My one hope is that 25 years later, the dudes in that band have had Eddie Murphy-like epiphanies and realize how crappy those lyrics they wrote were when they were younger (Eddie Murphy has made statements indicating he regrets the insane homophobia found on his early stand-up albums). I know we talked about this song in another thread once and some people's stance on it bummed me out, as most people here seem like pretty decent dudes, regardless of politics or any of the other many divisive concepts our culture revolves around.

If we're going to cite metal lyrics driven by political, moral, or religious agendas, I'd have to say almost all National Socialist Black Metal falls into this category.

That depends a bit on who you're talking about. I mean, Varg is a pretty intensely political white supremacist dude (though his views are, surprisingly more nuanced than that from what I've read), but there aren't a lot of Burzum tracks that reflect this. If memory serves, the most you'll get are more recent tracks that sort of hark back to this "glory age" of mankind that never really existed.

You know, the irony of using recording technology to sing praises to a pre-electric age...

Funny enough, this makes me wonder how much music IS made out of a philosophy I couldn't get behind remotely but which doesn't overtly reflect that philosophy.

muckie wrote:

If we're going to cite metal lyrics driven by political, moral, or religious agendas, I'd have to say almost all National Socialist Black Metal falls into this category.

Good call. I avoid those bands like the plague.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

mlotek wrote:

DakotaRogers wrote:

First thing that came to mind was "What a Joke" by Deliverance.

Sure, it was ignorant back then as well, but it's especially cringeworthy today.

not at all. Great lyrics.
Sinners, atheists, antichristians would not like the lyrics though.

Yeah, cringeworthy indeed. I started checking Deliverance out a couple years ago, after pretty much ignoring anything called Christian metal for years. But when I got to "What A Joke", I was done with that band, particularly the part about "homos" trying to claim their lifestyle is not perverted.

My one hope is that 25 years later, the dudes in that band have had Eddie Murphy-like epiphanies and realize how crappy those lyrics they wrote were when they were younger (Eddie Murphy has made statements indicating he regrets the insane homophobia found on his early stand-up albums). I know we talked about this song in another thread once and some people's stance on it bummed me out, as most people here seem like pretty decent dudes, regardless of politics or any of the other many divisive concepts our culture revolves around.

Deliverance actually re-recorded the What A Joke song last year as a bonus track for the Stay of Execution (20th anniversary) album. You might be pleased to hear that they went PC and changed the word homo to "world".

I was reading an article yesterday about good reasons not to date a musician. One of these involved how they will often use relationships as the basis for their lyrics, but often times it was actually their fault for being narcissistic and causing the breakup. For example, Jon Bon Jovi cheated on Diane Lane while he was married then goes back to his wife and writes "You Give Love a Bad name" about the experience. In contrast, John Denver wrote Annie's Song about a girl he loved that later divorced him. That, and people usually take the musician's side whenever these things happen that are in fact their fault (largely due to the nature of their profession, like actors). The lyrics are then distorted or biased. Rather, we should not take music lyrics too seriously in general. They are, at best, an actor telling a story as a character. Expecting too much from them is unrealistic in terms of 'sincerity'. The self-centered nature of being in a creative career that demands such a rigid scheduele should logically lead us to believe what has long been attested to: that people with so much public exposure are in many ways more distant. I saw a documentary about 80s HR/HM and there were girls talking about their time with bands like Poison, etc. who wanted to be the groupies to these guys that would woo them with love songs, then cheat, and write breakup songs where the author is cast as 'the victim'. To that one girl noted, "They got all the fame and fortune. We just got the heartache."

In that case, very few lyrics, if sincerity and genuineness are to be taken into account, are 'profound'. But then again, a lot of people in the literary world were good at observing and taking note of things around them but not living lives that aspired to the morality of the characters portrayed. Hemingway and Colette are good examples. Still, with the Queen example cited, we should be on-guard for bullshit at all times.

You're digging into one of those *DEEP QUESTIONS* about whether the art should be judged in context with the artist or as a separate thing. Personally, I think it depends on the art. If someone's just making art and that's it, I can deal with the creator not matching up to the utopia they're singing/writing about. When you mix art with political action that then dictates how I'm supposed to live, my tolerance for the artist's foibles and failings as a person drops off a cliff. Trick is, and I could be wrong here but I don't think so, the idea of the politically active artist is a relatively new thing, so you didn't really have to worry about it prior to... say the 80s or thereabouts.

Funny thing though, you can often pick up hints about an artist via their lyrics. There was a biography on Van Morrison I went through a few months ago which pointed out that all of the love songs he wrote for his first wife talked about what she did for him and there was zero mention of what he would do for her. Hmm.. Interesting. Then again, when the biography begins with the author talking about the artist in question not only refusing to be interviewed, but actively preventing the author from interviewing other people who were there, you know you're in for some fun. The introduction ends with the author effectively saying, "I'm going to try to avoid letting my personal bitterness over this guy being a prick influence the book." Everything that followed is exactly what you would have hoped for.