Thursday, February 22, 2007

music or lyrics?

i am an impatient woman. i cannot wait till the freaking quotes from "music and lyrics" get released. i want to blog about that corny line in the movie and i want to do it now. so i will.

sueann's probably got the closest match when she commented:
"the melody of a song is like the appearance of the person, the sexual attraction but what matters after that is the lyrics of the song, which is the personality of the person that really tells u who and what the person is"


when i heard that whole part during the movie, i was reminded of a conversation i had with a friend sometime last month. we were watching a live musical performance and somehow the topic of discussion veered towards music and lyrics.

i remember him telling me that when he listens to a song, he looks for the melody, then the parts of the instruments making up the music and finally he appreciates the way the whole song is performed. alot of what he likes is centered on how the music sounds, what it makes him feel and the way it is presented on stage.

i responded by saying that i loathe songs that sound good but have no substance in their words. lyrics should complement the music. there's nothing worse than a song with a great melody and absolutely rubbish lyrics, for instance michael wong's "tong hua". good grief. to me, a song's words must be as alive as its tune or else the song's just an empty can making noise.

i'm not sure if our differing opinions really reflected how we judge people. after all, it's just a line in a mediocre romantic comedy which was only just redeemed by the hilarious '80s pop video in the opening credits and hugh grant's one-liners.

it is true, though, that as hard as it is to find songwriters these days who place the same emphasis on lyrics as they do melody and marketability, it is just as hard to find people who work on their personalities as much as they do their appearance.

we may like different components of a song - i know people who judge a song solely on how great the bass line is - but no one can deny that when a truly amazing song comes a long, one that has both a killer melody and powerful lyrics, it just blows us away.

there's just no compensation for that kind of...i can't even find the right word for it...perfection.

lishun at 10:26 PM

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