1969 Had Terrible Lyrics Too

The last few months curating lyrics for my lyrics game has demonstrated just how long I’ve been out-of-touch with modern music. When I go digging for songs I know (and I think others should know), almost everything I reach for is thirty to sixty years old. I’m trying to fix that, but man — it’s been rough going. Today’s music is … well … let’s just say it’s all sounding a little samey to me.

In the process of trying to figure out why, I ran across a video from producer and YouTube star Rick Beato doing his old-man-screams-at-clouds bit about how awful lyrics have become.

What does he choose for an example of “good” lyrics? The Beatles’s Across the Universe, a 1969 John Lennon song which starts:

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me

Interesting choice. I would have made a different one. Lennon liked the song, though; in 1970 he told Jann Wenner:

It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve written. In fact, it could be the best. It’s good poetry, or whatever you call it, without chewin’ it. See, the ones I like are the ones that stand as words, without melody. They don’t have to have any melody, like a poem, you can read them.

I think this is probably why I don’t like the song. Unlike Lennon, I think lyrics are part of a performance. Well-written lyrics serve and are served by the music. I can think of several other Beatles lyrics that stand better by themselves than “Across the Universe” does. But for the sake of argument, yeah, it’s better read aloud than the first song Beato compares it to:

I don’t like no whips and chains and you can’t tie me down
But you can whip your lovin’ on me baby
Whip your lovin’ on me, baby

But is that really fair? Out of curiosity I took a look at 1969’s Billboard chart (Across the Universe did not chart). Number one was “Sugar Sugar,” which is more family-friendly but also pretty vapid:

When I kissed you, girl, I knew how sweet a kiss could be
(I know how sweet a kiss can be)
Like the summer sunshine, pour your sweetness over me
(Pour your sweetness over me)

Say what you will about “Lovin on Me,” the lyrics are at least more evocative. 1969’s number 10 was “Crimson and Clover:”

Yeah
My my, such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling

The lyrics for “Crimson and Clover” serve the music really well, though. The song sounds like a stoned lullaby, and words that leap off the page would just wouldn’t fit. But you still need the words to ground the song in a mental space. Without the words, “Crimson and Clover” isn’t a song, it’s just noodling. With the lyrics, it’s a daydream about the barista.

When I write about movies I try to keep in mind what the movie is trying to do. There’s no point evaluating Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with the same metrics you would use for The 400 Blows. They’re intended for different mindsets, different markets, and different tastes. Trying to compare the two would be like complaining the vanilla ice-cream cone you just ate was just not as good as the Massaman curry you ate one night in Bangkok.

Similarly, when thinking about lyrics we need to ask ourselves these questions:

1. What is the lyricist trying to do? What genre are they operating in?
2. How are people supposed to respond to these lyrics? Think? Jump around?
3. What audiences are the songs intended for?

If you can match answers between the two, maybe you can compare them reasonably. But in this case I really don’t think you can.

Lennon is going the enlightened singer-songwriter route. Across the Universe is both a reflection of and evangelism for Lennon’s interest in Transcendental Meditation. We know (because he told us) that Lennon strives for lyrics-as-poetry, words that can be severed from their performance without losing their power.

I know significantly less about Jack Harlow, but Wikipedia helps out a bit:

Thomas Hobbs, another writer for The Guardian, wrote that Harlow embraces “being a dorky outsider”, while additionally having “enough charisma” to pull off “using language that is usually cringeworthy coming from suburban white people.” He has described his own music as emphasizing rhythm, and his lyricism as being “personal but fun”, and geared toward “connect[ing] with people.”

These goals and motivations are very much in line with pop sensibilities, particularly “connecting with people.” One reason hit song lyrics seem vapid is they speak to universal experience in a way that’s not isolating. In this case, it feels to me like Harlow is speaking to the human aspiration to be sexually confident while actually being quite anxious.

Let me show you what I mean. Here’s the opening bars:

I don’t like no whips and chains and you can’t tie me down
But you can whip your lovin’ on me baby (That’s right, that’s right)
Whip your lovin’ on me, baby

Leading with his turn-offs. “Please don’t do these things to me.” What you can’t hear on the page is the swagger in Harlow’s delivery; you need that. The words undercut the attitude: full of strut, still the dorky outsider.

I’m vanilla, baby
I’ll choke you, but I ain’t no killer, baby
She twenty-eight, tellin’ me I’m still a baby
I get love in Detroit like Skilla Baby

More contradiction and self-deprecation. I’ve never heard anyone brag about being “vanilla,” rappers are always the freakiest in the room. Line two I read as “I’m not really into this, but if you insist.” Is this an offer of a compromise? “She” in line three is a slightly older woman (Harlow would have been 26? 27?). Being called “still a baby” by someone just a year older than you doesn’t sound like it’s a compliment. But here again, Harlow delivers the line like he thinks it is.

And check that last line — I don’t think I’ve ever heard one rapper name-check another to say he’s just as popular. The next few bars expand on this, still comparing himself:

Young J-A-C-K, AKA
Rico like Suave, Young Enrique…

I’m not saying this is what Harlow intended. I would never. I’m just saying that it’s there, and I can see it, and it’s interesting. To my mind, that makes it a good lyric. But it still fits into (plays off of) the expectations and structures of the genre Harlow is working in. If this is intentional, it’s quite an achievement. If it’s not, I don’t know how Harlow could have done any better on purpose.

The point is: lyrics are part of a song. Do you want to hear drums in isolation? Probably not. If you take the lyrics out of the song — just read them off the page — you lose context. You can’t tell their purpose anymore. Harlow’s bars are in service to the beat, the same as a baseline.

Are lyrics today worse than they used to be? That’s hard to quantify. Even if you could, though, you have to approach the lyrics on their own terms and in the context of how (if) they serve the music. I don’t like Lennon’s lyrics, especially in “Across the Universe.” But Beato’s not wrong that Lennon’s lyrics read better than Harlow’s. Some lyrics were written like they were meant to be read. Others were never intended to stand on their own. Harlow’s sound weak in comparison because Beato is treating these two sets of lyrics like they are supposed to carry the same weight. They’re not.