Squonk wrote:
I think the problem is that Musicians aren't taken as seriously as writers or poets, so in the public's eye, there is no room for artistic licence and expression!
Maybe they shouldn't be. Or shouldn't all be. There's a lot of lyrics that are banal or just looking for a cheap shock. How does the wheat get separated from the chaff and by whom?
Another problem is that poetry tends not to be read over VH1 or on FM radio stations to mass audiences, and when it IS people understand that it's poetry and either treat it as such or change station.
And poetry tends to get read to audiences who understand the untrustworthy narrator and metaphor and specific poetic traditions and who will catch and understand allusions to other works etc etc.
So maybe sophisticated works require a sophisticated audience.
So would sophisticated verdicts. A verdict along the lines of "the song uses a parodic, first person approach to portray the ignorance of a blue collar worker who allows his own xenophobia, possibly the consequence of an unsophisticated and uncompassionate mentoring, to colour his own expressions of misplaced frustration and resentment" might not go down well with a lot of people.
After all, he said "faggot" didn't he?
I really don't know what the answer is, I must say. There's a school of thought that says that for something to be "art" it just has to be declared as such, or the creator has to regard themselves as an artist creating a work of art.
Some years ago I heard some "poets" on a chat show on SAFM. The "poetry" was apalling - clumsy, cliched blah blah blah. I got particularly furious when the "poets" started complaining about being taught Shakespeare. When one of them gleefully exclaimed "we don't need no Summer Night's Dream" and the rest started applauding my blood pressure reached critical level.
I called a friend of mine and said "are you listening to this crap." He was.
I said "I bet I could write something like that in about 5 minutes whilst I'm eating breakfast."
The next morning I proved that I could - though to be fair I did plagiarise the "poetry" a bit, especially their constant use of the word "azure" to describe African skies. I did though use MacDonald's as a sort of metaphor - which was something beyond most of the "poets".
