Allen recently commented on how I don't listen to particularly good lyricists when it comes to music, so I thought I'd write about that and defend myself.
My music list consists more or less of: Dave Matthews Band, Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms, Santana, Matchbox 20, Train, The Killers, Maroon 5, Sheryl Crowe, Michelle Branch, Jason Mraz, Fighting Gravity, Third Eye Blind, a little bit of bluegrass that includes Allison Krauss and Union Station and Nickel Creek, and piano players like Bruce Hornsby and Ben Folds.
I don't write much about music because I think music is a lot more subjective and difficult to judge and I find that the way to write about music and be accepted is to look obscure band names that aren't in the mainstream. The more mainstream something is that you listen to, the more made fun of you are which I find odd because the point of every band is to reach the largest audience anyway. This phenomena exists in the world of film to a very small degree where a certain echelon of film snobs denounce Spielberg as the anti-Christ and love to rave on about films by Asian and obscure French directors that the average person has never heard of, but it's more common in music.
I think I'm going to take just one of these bands (maybe I'll do another one at some point) and discuss their excellence in lyric-writing: Matchbox 20 which is a band whose songs I have personally connected to.
The song that's been most influential to me I would say is "Mad Season" from their second album. The lyrics go "I feel stupid but it's something that comes and goes/ and I've been changing I think it's funny how no one knows/ We don't talk about the little things that we do without/ When that whole mad season comes around....I need you now/ do you think you can cope/ You've figured me out/ I'm lost (in the second rendition of the chorus, he replaces "lost" with "a child") and I'm hopeless/ I'm bleeding and broken/ Though I've never spoken/ I come undone/ This mad season"
This is one of two sings I played over and over during my freshman year of college to get me through (the other one was "Your Winter" by Sister Hazel and had to do with a girl problem more). I was supposed to be having the best time in my life, but I didn't love college my first year. I felt disoriented being away from home and the same social circle for 18 years; I quickly became over my head, academically; and in high school I defined myself as a runner but didn't make the team. The song spoke to me about being surrounded by a sea of seemingly happy people experiencing the greatness of college for the first time and enjoying their everyday lives and how you don't seem in step with them. When I transferred colleges to JMU, three years later after taking a year off and being in the real world, I had another "Mad Season" of significantly greater proportions. I was transferring to a school I had not planned on ever attending (it was my safety school, while I looked for a school out-of-state) and was living in a dorm at the age of 21 where most people moved off campus at the age of 19 (noone had told me that). JMU has an inordinately high amount of school pride (not that some of it isn't deserved, but still, I might call it an unhealthy lack of willingness to challenge the status quo), so I was in a worst-case scenario situation, and surrounded by people who not only loved everything about their lives but didn't even comprehend someone who didn't feel equally happy about their lives at JMU. When he says "I need you now, do you think you can cope," it made me feel like I wasn't alone in the whole thing, how I wanted to admit, "Yeah, I look like I'm doing ok as a "college student but I'm not", and how more than anything else, I wanted to reach out among the sea of people too distracted by how fun the drunk bus could be and how busy their studies could be, and tell them how hopeless, lost, bleeding and broken I felt.
Another one of his songs relates to this, "All I Need":
"Everywhere, someone's getting over, everybody's lied to someone, people still use other people with a crooked smile/ and all around the world, there's a sinking feeling, out there right now now, someone's feeling down on themselves and don't know why/ and that's all I need/ someone else to cling to/ someone I can lean on until I don't need to/ just stay on through/ the night and then the moment let me do cause that's all that I need right now (he later replaces "right now" with "write it down")
In this song, it talks about how, again you're being surrounded with a sea of superficial people and how you personally just need someone to connect to. I also relate to the line "the moment let me down," because when I was younger I used to blame myself heavily for simple decisions I made and felt that if my life was sucking, it was because of a single moment letting me down. The his single, "Unwell" also is asking the listener to understand that sometimes he might not be at his best at that moment.
He presents this theme about understanding and being open about people's weaknesses and confronts racism in the song "Black and White People":
"One boy head strong/ thinks he's just having one of those days/ he's been pushed down so long you can hear him start to think/ and it's one last round full of petty conversation/ you hold on boy 'till it's more than you can take/ cause you won't go down like this....if it's just that you're weak/ can we talk about it/ it's getting so damn creepy just nursing this ghost of a chance/ the fiction, the romance, and the technicolor dreams of black and white people"
Other songs he's made that I can relate to:
"Real World"-The singer wonders what it would be like to be a CEO or a superhero and wishes in the end the real world would just stop hassling him. I related to that track as a teenager a lot, and even now
"Shame"-Just has interesting lyrics, about lost love and guilt
"Last Beautiful Girl"-The feeling that you're so tired of dealing with the opposite sex and that last girl who got away was your only hope at salvation from it
"Bright Lights" or "Hand Me Down"-Both deal with how a girl you like or were with is being presented with another option and you feel that you're better than that other option
"Let's See How Far We've Come"-His latest single talks about the Apocalypse happening and his attempts to take a personal inventory on "how far he's come" as the world comes to an end. I tend to catastrophize a lot and feel that a lot of things are the end of the world so I relate to it pretty well.
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