Riaan C wrote:
On a serious note, there's a tendency with some songwriters to deliberately use contemporary buzz-words to (1) get some street cred and (2) catch attention of teenyboppers. Case in point is reference to Facebook, Twitter, texting etc in songs. So I think he may have done it deliberately. May even bring the lyrics into more Google searches, etc. But for a band like Train, its a bit of a strange juxtaposition. I noticed the singer's face and clothes looked really weird on the 'Hey Soul Sister' video - almost like he was trying to look younger than he is. Certainly very different from the Train of 'Drops of Jupiter' etc.
Using the jargon of your audience can make a song real for them, but also render it difficult for anybody on the outside.
Richard Thompson wrote a song that made heavy use of G.I. Slang. Great song, and he says he got several e-mails from G.I.s who though he'd nailed the situation (Iraq) pretty well, but he had to do some explaining for the benefit of those in the audience who hadn't been in the US Army in the last dozen or so years - lines like "I'm dead meat in my humvee frankenstein" and "seven muzzle monkeys standing in a row".
