Lyrics and music

A few days ago I had an interesting conversation with one friend of mine. We mostly talked about some bands we like to listen to, the lyrics of their songs and what kind of live shows they do.

At some point one of my friend's other friend joined us while we were discussing about some band's lyrics. He soon declares that in his opinion the melodies and talented playing are far more important than the lyrics of the songs. Kind of an interesting point of view I must say, but also a bit funny. Atleast we had a nice discussion about it, and he did have a few good points to back up his opinion.

I think it is understandable, kind of, since we were talking about metal music, where you often have to look up the lyrics yourself from the album booklet or from the internet. Because, tbh, most of the time your ears/mind can't extract the words from the vocalist's performance.

Anyways, the funny thing was, that the person I was talking with only knew the names of the songs of a certain artist, but had no idea what the songs were about. I was a bit amazed of this, because I've usually kept the lyrics as one of the main reasons to like or dislike a band/song. I mean, if the lyrics were really something close to utter bs, it immediately decreases my interest towards the band. Ofcourse this is a rather extreme example and it doesn't apply in all cases, but you get the idea. Atleast I would find it a little strange to cheer for a band that praises something in its songs I fully disagree with.

In the end, I think we managed to convince him to take a closer look to the lyrics of the bands. I hope so. Not necessarily memorize all the lyrics, but atleast to get a faint idea what the songs are about.