Impossible words

A love affair without music? Improbable? Impossible? It may come in two forms: music which accompanies the affair or actually expresses it. Thus two people may tomber amoureux to the strains of Roll Out The Barrel or Coca Cola's I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing. Accidental music, you might say. More interesting is intentional music, which foretells or echoes experience.

For me the best combination of tune and sentiment is by Handel:

Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees where you sit, shall crowd into a shade.

Note, no first person singular. One lover wishes this situation - unselfishly - on the other. You feel things will go well.

When VR and I met our musical tastes were still widening. Sinatra's Songs for Swinging Lovers was in the air. Perhaps: I Thought About You:

I peeped through the crack
Looked at the track
One going back to you
And what did I do? I thought about you.

For love affairs are as much about thought as about action.

Now we might prefer Mozart (actually Schikaneder, the librettist):

This something I can not name,
Yet I feel it here like fire burning.

For love often converts badly into words. But it’s better in German.

Or how about Paul Simon?

The rooms were musty, and the pipes were old
All that winter, we shared a cold
Drank all the orange juice that we could hold
I do it for your love.

In Out of Arizona I needed a love quote and turned to Rabbie Burns:

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Over to you.

Pop: rhymes and scansion

Responding to my last post about a Manic Street Preachers political song, Plutarch asks – ostensibly - whether “rabbit” may rhyme with “fascist” but also touches on pop lyrics in general. It’s a matter I’ve already wrestled with as I’ve attempted to disinter pop’s nature.

First, I haven’t yet tried to distinguish between pop and rock. I don’t intend to do so here other than offer a single comment: pop tends to favour lyrics (narratives, reflections, confessions, etc) whereas rock tends to use words and/or phrases as sounds, often driving out meaning through repetition and electronic distortion. The problem is that the pop/rock division is not clear-cut.

Thus MSP make an emotional point about a serious subject (The Spanish civil war) and go for lyrics. Gradually the accompaniment increases in volume, a legitimate strategy to heighten emotions. Eventually music drowns out the words. Surely they’re meant to be heard. Or are you supposed to know them from scratch? Since the song also seeks to achieve political conversion I think they are intended to be heard.

But how about “rabbit” and fascist”? To which Plutarch might have added “Should pop lines scan?” My interim answer is that good rhymes and good scansion are unnecessary. Pop singers are adept at overcoming terrible rhymes and seriously unbalanced lines. It’s part of the genre. However… and the juxtaposition seems almost to have been planned…

For the same post I listened to The Wanted’s All Time Low. Here the excellent scansion makes the line ends crack like a whip. And there’s even a play on words later on. It seems like an old old story. If your message is heartfelt you needn’t polish the structure. Sophistication is thought to be betrayal. Rubbish, alas. Guernica is a professional painting; it’s also heartfelt.