« It's Not What You Sing; It's The Way You Sing It »

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Zach McKnight gets up on a stage to perform with his local Ottawa punk band, The KrapSkraps, several times a year. The rest of the band plays their instruments, while it is McKnight’s job to sing or scream. The crowd jumps and dances around to their music, and in that there is a link between the audience and the performer. Does that inevitably mean that the audience agrees with or understands what he is singing about? If you can’t bond with the poetry and stories in his songs, does that mean you can’t appreciate The KrapSkraps?

Watching a band perform live can be an entertaining and reflective experience at the same time. You could be spending your time dancing around to the rhythm, or perhaps you are listening attentively to the words being sung and finding that they strike a personal chord with you. Or maybe you are listening to those words and wondering what the heck they are trying to say. Something that a lot of music listeners would find hard to comprehend is that they might not be trying to say anything at all.

McKnight is a student in his last year of high school. When asking him about the lyrical content of his music, he tells me that a lot of his songs are about “dark personal experiences, even if the crowd doesn’t get that.” It really struck me that they do not intend for their audience to connect with their songs on that basis. It is not their aim, like many popular recording artists today, to have their listeners be able to say “Hey! I’ve been through that!” or “I get that” with the first listen. I find this both interesting and admirable.

As someone who is known for being obsessed with music, I get a strange look when I tell people that I don’t care about lyrics and feel they are always secondary. Most feel it is the words and lyrical meaning of a song that is the recipe for its true value. They like connecting with the poetry in the music. A song doesn’t even have to have lyrics to be regarded as meaningful and I think that should be somewhat evident. A lot will say, however, that they must enjoy the lyrics in order to enjoy the song.

Music is What Feelings Sound Like

Nirvana’s front man, Kurt Cobain, laughed many times at people trying to decipher his lyrics. He said that although he liked to be passionate and sincere, other times he would rather “have fun and act like a dork.” This made perfect sense: the “dork-ish” songs probably wouldn’t have sounded as good if he went back to change the words, trying to make them seem more heartfelt.

Words can be used as an additional instrument in making music. Not only the words you choose, but the way you choose to say/sing them can assist in shaping the melody of the song. Although they can be lacking in significance or be dumb in content, they may structure a witty beat of their own rather than merely passing on information or a display of feelings. You may be able to write beautiful lyrics, but what good are they if you don’t know what to do with them?

Sometimes the words of a song can look stale and corny when reading them on a piece of paper, and yet they sound amazingly thoughtful and striking when sung out loud to a beautiful tune. One of my favourite anonymous quotes states that “music is what feelings sound like.” I find that to be a tough quote to argue. Think about it: does one really have to understand Italian to be moved by opera?

I set out to see if any other local musicians feel that lyrics are an essential element. Andrew Loeb, one of the five multi-talented members of experimental rock group In Antarctica, says that “the intent of each song is carried as much by its musical elements as its verbal ones” and that lyrics are only essential in the sense that most of their songs are written with an eye towards having them. He explains that each of them in the band find a different way to connect with each song, even if it’s not necessarily through the lyrics.

Are the Lyrics Essential?

I can imagine playing in a band and not being able to connect with the lyrical content. I’m sure that is an easy position to find yourself in if you are not the one who writes them. But, how could you please everyone? It’s not as if a group of people can be expected to have the same feelings about certain things or be going through the same kind of struggles and/or adventures in life. Thus, I imagine what Andrew says about In Antarctica must ring true for many other bands. Even if they can’t connect with the poetry, they can still find ways to connect with the song itself. Even if that means you only like the song because you can dance to it, it still is a connection.

But, this is what the mainstream is: most people seek out music that can assist them through tough times or put emotions and thoughts into a different perspective. They want to be able to sing along and mean every word of it. Thankfully, getting the insight of Jamie Kronick of experimental rockers Paramedics and Eugene J. of Future Snake gives me hope that Kurt Cobain will not be the last of great musicians to see lyrics as secondary.

“We use vocals in a slightly unconventional way compared to the majority of music out there today. Instead of having vocals throughout the entirety of a piece of music, we use the voice simply as another instrument, occasionally having the focus, but often simply being a texture, or not present at all. Because of this use, lyrics aren't an essential part to our music.” Kronick says.

Eugene, guitarist and vocalist of Future Snake, explains that his band tends to write whatever pops into their heads “without much thought…as long as it fits the phrasing.” He admits that the lyrics are usually the last parts of the songs to be written and are most of the time the least essential.

I firmly believe that if you could play and write really good songs but were unable to write lyrics to follow that song, there shouldn’t be anything taken away from its worth. However, if all you could do was write lyrics, does that mean that you are musically inclined? Not necessarily.

The next time you look up the lyrics to a song you like and find yourself confused or disappointed because it wasn’t about what you expected or it doesn’t relate to you even though you felt it did, try not to think so much on it. Try to remember that it’s quite possible you wouldn’t have enjoyed this piece of music as much if it were written any other way.