the power of music!
 

there are tons of great songs, for sure. but i mean, what are the songs make you FEEL? i've recently been thinking more and more about these 'special' songs that give you goosebumps. most of the time these songs have to be heard in their normal position going through the album they are in, for me at least. but when i really listen, there are some songs that really hit me and send me into some vague form of a high, or drive me with some real passion to kill or to make something of the world, or something a whole lot less inspirational. do you have such songs? songs that aren't JUST personal and aren't just ones that hit you close to home (though they apply too)

i'm not sure if i've explained what sort of songs i mean, here's one:
empty cans, off the album 'a grand don't come for free' by the streets. during 'the' revelational line, i feel myself float with some sort of giddy spirit and feeling. and i think to myself: jesus christ, i love life. there are very few other songs which make as happy as that song does, in all honesty. though it must be said a huge part of the songs' effect is lost unless you listen to the whole album and get the story etc.

here's some other songs (there's obviously a good few number more) that send me into some sort of heightened state of emotion, whether it be hopelessness, paranoia or a furious desire to just.. whatever:

circa survive - house of leaves
converge - jane doe
murder by death - those who left
godspeed you black emperor - sleep
world's end girlfriend - give me shadow, put on my crown
plan b - no more eatin

i'd like to talk more about empty cans itself but i feel that initial listen was basically an aural orgasm, maybe the revelation wasn't that surprising in retrospect but it really is so.. reassuring, and i don't want to take away the effect from anyone if they wanted to listen to the album to see for themselves.

Re: the power of music!
 

Why would you want to be put into those emotions? :(

Re: the power of music!
 

I don't know why but Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol does it for me.

Yeah yeah emo fag etc. It still does though.

Re: the power of music!
 

Imogen Heap - Hide and Seak

An amazingly powerful song that reminds me of a girl I loved. Of course, I was firmly in the friends zone. I got over it, but it's still a song I love, it just reminds me of her though :(

Re: the power of music!
 

If it was called Imogen Heap - Hide and Sikh I'd totally want to hear it. As it is she's just missed out on one more paying customer!

Re: the power of music!
 

Anything by Arcade Fire

Re: the power of music!
 

The Tindersticks - Tiny Tears

Simply just awesome

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Radiohead - Creep --> good powerful song, makes me think "wow, im not as depressed as that guy!

The Cranberries - Zombie ----> Its a weird song, gets me motivated

Razorlight - Golden Touch ----> used to make me happy, got a good ring to it, and also is catchy as hell!

Justin Timberlake - Move Your Body ----> The chicks dig my jt moves, and therefore i get sex, end of, during sex i get many emmotions, from the stirring in my pants, the exhaustion, and ofcourse, the release of my man juice at the end, awesome!

Therefore JT FTW!

End of discussion

Re: the power of music!
 

Beethoven - SQ 15
Delerium - Silence (Airscape Remix)
~
~
Beethoven - everything else realy, esp Symphs 5+7 / sonatas 8+14
Erik Satie - Gnossiennes 1+2 (only Aldo Ciccolini playing, noone else I've heard gets it)
Agalloch - Fire Above, Ice Below
Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering (whole album, so beautifully innocent and childlike)
Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta, Movement 1 (best climax ever)
Philip Glass - Facades
Autechre - Leterel
World's End Girlfriend - Scorpius Circus
Dvorak - Symph 9
Neutral Milk Hotel - 2 Headed Boy (Pt 2)
Arvo Part - Spiegel Im Spiegel
Shostakovich - SQ 8
The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
Cosmic Gate - Exploration Of Space (Extended Mix)
<various> - Cat's Cradle (probably the only song I've ever liked for the lyrics)

Re: the power of music!
 

There's nothing that really triggers anything in me all the time, but there's a ****load of songs that affect me strongly but in different ways if I'm in the right mindset. Here's everything I can think of at 4 in the morning

Arcade Fire - Intervention, In The Back Seat, Une Annee Sans Lumiere, Tunnels, Haiti
The National - Friend Of Mine, Abel, Wasp Nest, Mr November
Final Fantasy - Song Song Song
The Magnetic Fields - I Think I Need A New Heart, The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side, Take Ecstasy With Me, Born On A Train, I Thought You Were My Boyfriend, Reno Dakota
M83 - Slowly
LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge
Grizzly Bear - Knife, Lullaby
Simon Bookish - Introducing...Elektra Therapy
!!! - Me and Giuliani.. (LFO mix)
Belle and Sebastian - Lord Anthony, The Boy Done Wrong Again, Sleep The Clock Around
Bloc Party - Song For Clay, Uniform, Pioneers, Waiting For The 7.18, Where Is Home?
TVOTR - Staring At The Sun, Young Liars, Blind, Let The Devil In, Wash The Day
Velvet Underground - All Tomorrow's Parties, Heroin
The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
The Knife - From Off To On
Patrick Wolf - Teignmouth, The Libertine
Tunng - Jenny Again, Woodcat

Actually, i lied; The Beeching Report, by iLiKETRAiNS, gets me all the time. Everything by them, in fact.

Re: the power of music!
 

All songs from Trust Co., A Perfect Circle, and Queens of the Stone Age.

Re: the power of music!
 

Wow, you must be an angry man inside!

Re: the power of music!
 

I remembered one I should have thought of before really.

Queen - The Show Must Go On


When you actually listen to the lyrics and realise that as he sang them Freddie already knew he was dying, it's pretty moving.

Re: the power of music!
 

Music threads always remind me of how old I am. In the above lists I recognized the Beatles, Queen and some of the classical composers. The rest were groups and songs which were totally unknown to me.

That being said, for the most part, music which has had an eftect on me is connected to some moment in my life.

I remember the song "She Works Hard for the Money" was playing when....well never mind that. But I do specificly remember this song and it has a warm spot in my memory.

Re: the power of music!
 

My Very Best - Elbow

Re: the power of music!
 

Queen - Dont Stop Me Now
Metallica - Enter Sandman
Nirvana - Lithium
Guns N Roses - I Used To Love Her (But I Had To Kill Her)

i couple of songs that really get me :)

Re: the power of music!
 

These threads are pointless

Re: the power of music!
 

Why, if I'm not mistaken it's Mr Cheerful!

Re: the power of music!
 

i'm with you on that one ..

Queen - The Show Must Go On

also...

hazel O'conner - will you ( that sax solo gets me every time )

and if i have a shed load of work to to (at work) and i need to be motivated.

Gary Moore album - Out in the fields

Re: the power of music!
 

Other than demonstrating that English is your second language what is the purpose of this rubbish?

Threads where everyone just lists what they like are pointless on a DISCUSSION forum.

Re: the power of music!
 

In the old days mentally unstable children who constantly failed to meet the lowest academic standards didn't try to annoy people merely because they point out something obviously true.

This thread, like the other 'listing threads', is pointless. Their only purpose is an opportunity for people to spam something that no one reads. We have PB for that nowadays.

Re: the power of music!
 

Indeed. There are quite a few songs:

Converge - Heaven in her Arms / Black Cloud
Reflux - -=[*]=-
Comeback Kid - Wake the Dead
REM - Daysleeper
Beloved - Failure on my Lips

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Broken Social Scene's 'Anthems for a 17 year old girl' makes me sad. Metric's 'Soft Rock Superstar' as well. I think it must just be her voice :|

Re: the power of music!
 

It pains me inside to say it, but; "Yahwe is right".

Re: the power of music!
 

Most of the emotional connections I've formed with songs are just associations of how I was feeling when I listened to them. The first Dido album is one of the few things in the world that can send me into a depression simply because I had a month period where I was unhappy and someone played it every day.

Similarly, there are various clubbing songs ('Eclipse' by Apoptygma Berzerk & 'We Stand Alone' by Covenant) which make me almost "come up" when hearing them (because they're both brilliant and the first fifty times I heard them I was as high as a kite).

Other songs (like Brand New's 'Quiet Little Things') make me think of poker due to heavy over-listening when I was playing fairly heavily online.

The only song that I can think of which actually changed my emotional state without any internal association is Green Day's "Hitchin' a Ride" and I'm not even sure why that is.
Off-topic, but I don't get this. I'd say the majority of the music I like is (at least heavily) becuase of the lyrics. A tune can be enjoyable enough but without words it all seems a bit flat to me.

This is also why I don't appreciate most dance music - which everyone promised I would once I took any drugs. :(

Re: the power of music!
 

I can understand liking a song for the lyrics but I've never found myself moved by a song based on its lyrics. I think when the emotions you're supposed to be feeling are articulated and expressed by the actual artist it somehow cheapens the emotional impact of the song. Sort of like how in a really good horror film you don't see the bad guy's face or find out anything about him or it because no matter how ****ed up the writer can make him it just can't compare to the power of the human imagination.


Edit: Obviously art, subjective, fq.

Re: the power of music!
 

Like classical music.

I like Chopin and Mozart.

Re: the power of music!
 

I think when lyrics leave a lot to the imagination there's something wonderful to be said. When there's room for interpretation. It doesnt all have to be 'i met a girl, i fell in love'.

Obviously lyrics are most important if you feel some sort of empathy with them. Sometimes you let hours and hours of lyrics roll over you without really listening to the words.

Personally for me, the first time i did e's, i was in a pub surrounded by my friends and i zoned out and listened to 'everybody's changing' and i didnt realise it was about drugs and how apt it was. I hated keane before then, but i grew to love them in about 3.32 minutes.

'so little time, try to understand that i,
try to make a move just to stay in the game, i
try to stay awake and remember my name, but
everybody's changing and i dont feel the same'

For me it pretty much perfectly summed up how ****ing messed i was. I was absolutely bursting with joy, but sadness too in some sort of bizarre over-sentimental way, and because id never done it before i really didnt know how to put it into words how unbelievably wonderful everything was - never mind the fact that i wasnt able to even speak because i was so out of it. Just a little chorus, one you've heard many times, but to me it just sums up how when you're messed on substances, you either do - or think you do - have a greater (or different) understanding of all your surroundings, seeing everything in complex mathematical formula and things, but just cant be coherent in your explanations to anyone about what you see and how you feel.

Re: the power of music!
 

Mozart's hardly a good example of Classical music "without lyrics", as he specifically chose to use a German libretto in his operas.

Re: the power of music!
 

I'm not exactly sure how much credit I'd give to a feeling which originated while I was drunk/stoned. I'm sure I've danced to girls aloud when sufficiently drunk but that still doesn't mean that in the cold light of day I wouldn't brutally every last one of them for crimes against music and then rape the blood-covered corpses to Beethoven's 7th. Perhaps lyrics don't always lessen the impact but in terms of the songs that I find most moving I feel that the addition of lyrics most certainly would.

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I'm not really sure it's about "giving credit", in my case some songs are just linked with certain feelings which would be difficult to undo even if that were desirable. However, I doubt I'd form the same association with music as bad as Girls Aloud, but then I'm unlikely to go anywhere playing that sort of thing.

(And being high on pills is a different type of experience to being drunk or stoned I'd say, although I'm not a big smoker so I may be wrong.)

Re: the power of music!
 

no, i heard the album version first, and thought it was brilliant :)

niggapls, i have every converge album! i'm a HUGE converge fan, and i demand you stop being a faggot for someone who's such a botch fan, you should listen to a LOT more of converge. and dillinger. and possibly coalesce (though my favourite coalesce song is an acoustic of theirs 'blue collar lullaby')

tomkat/yahwe; yeah i realise it's mostly a list thread. so what?
i'm not sure if this was a serious question, but it's not about wanting to, it's about the power of music that's able to.

i'm really surprised by this, for some reason i had you down as a very singer-lyrical orientated guy, but this being said with your list, i must've definitely been thinking of someone else.

anthems for a 17 year old makes me feel really 'up for it', as in a me against the world sort of thing. interestingly, a friend of mine feels that the song is very 'relieving', in the sense that it lets her 'wash her hands' of certain things

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A fair amount of music I listen to is instrumental, but even with vocal stuff I've never really cared about lyrical content - I like stuff where the voical phrasing is done well, independently of whats being said. With a lot of my favourite songs, I could pick out single line phrases that I enjoy because they sound good, but I probably couldnt tell you offhand what any song is 'about' because I rarely bother to actually think about the lyrics as an integrated whole.

For me, the voice is best when its being used as just another instrument, perhaps mixed low so that it blends into everything else (eg Cocteau Twins) or just saying words that sound good regardless of what they mean (eg Can/NMH)

Re: the power of music!
 

Super Furry Animals - Hermann Loves Pauline
best song ever imo.

Klein Orkest - Over De Muur
Dutch song about Eastern/Western Berlin. brilliant lyrics.

Dalida - Buanas Noches Mi Amor
it gives me the ultimate 'summer-evening' feeling. they always play this song after some late-night tour de france talkshow ended. then i leave for the garden, with a glass of wine in my hand. summer during tour de france is for me ultimate happiness. life won't ever get better.

Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees
Queen - '39
Seal - Kiss From A Rose
songs chosen because they 'touch' me at the right spot when i'm in a certain mood. they're not brilliant musical-wise or whatever, but they do posess a certain power.


Roggier van Otterloo - Soldaat Van Oranje
deep, dramatic themesong, taken from a dutch warmovie. i love it.

Re: the power of music!
 

Don't mock '39, it's one of the few songs I know that deals with the very real issue of time dilation that interstellar astronauts face every day. Or every year to us.

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I don't think the most emotionally powerful music is about specific experiences. It's more about the sheer emotions involved themselves, despair, joy, hope, not despair about something or joy because of something.

Re: the power of music!
 

Another point is that lyrics are generally only able to express the sort of emotions which can be described in language, whereas instrumental music can (at its best) go beyond this and induce feelings which there arent really any words for.

Re: the power of music!
 

Were you trying to support his point?

Re: the power of music!
 

Again, not all lyrics are purely descriptive. They can leave a lot to the imagination just as instrumental stuff can. From the very same song (everybody's changing) the second(?) verse starts off with

you're gone from here, soon you will dissapear,
fading into beautiful nights

4 words, the meaning of which you can decipher/bastardise as much as you like, but i think they are nothing short of tremendous. You can't literally fade into a beautiful night, and it doesnt make much sense in any real world, but it still means an awful lot to me to hear them, because it tries to touch an intangible feeling that you cant explain properly.

small edit : it may be 'fading into beautiful light', but the meaning remains as abstract and open to interpretation. though i guess this gives credence to the 'it needs to be sung well/be brilliant musically' argument, otherwise we'd all go about in bars with poetry being read over the pa system

Re: the power of music!
 

Speak for yourself.

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Lyrics, in my opinion, should never try and be poetry (they are too closely related to mix), but should just attempt to say something that directly complements the music sonically or descriptively. I'm with Nodrog: I normally listen to the way lyrics sound and remember tunes rather than words.

Re: the power of music!
 

Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 and the first two tracks on the album.
Mozart - Piano Concerto In D Minor, Romance
There's a track in the middle of the Solaris soundtrack as well. I forget its title.

Re: the power of music!
 

why? what's wrong with some sort of semantic value to music as well?

Re: the power of music!
 

There's nothing wrong with it, I suppose. It just sometimes feels a bit like cross-contamination. Music can evoke powerful, primeval feelings extra-linguistically. It's something through which form and content can be blended completely: meaning is contained in the thing itself, innately, without the need for context or clarification. I find that lyrics sometimes confuse matters because it's not possible to pay attention to good (or atrocious, as is more often the case) poetry and good music at the same time. The presence of two conflicting forms of expression blurs the emotional impact of the music.
I love good poetry. I try to read as much of it as I can. But unfortunately I'm not sure I've ever come across lyrics that I would unreservedly call good poetry in their own right. Even if such a thing existed, I don't think it would work. Poetry is most effective when it stands in the shadow of music, and it can have a similar effect, but it is fundamentally a different thing altogether.

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Most pop music relies heavily on repitition which requires the melody provided by singing and lyrics to maintain interest after more than a couple of listens. Could you listen to all of Nevermind by Nirvana if it were purely instrumental? What about Bob Dylan with songs like 'It's OK Ma, (I'm Only Bleeding)' which is seven+ minutes long and has only a couple of variations in the music.

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My other post made the distinction more clearly, but I'm referring specifically to lyrics written for their own sake. There's nothing wrong with singing. Words often sound nice. A narrative obviously requires some kind of lyrical expression in a song. But I don't like a lyric that is nothing more than an attempt at poetry. There is a clear distinction between lyrics and poetry which is sometimes missed (re. the 'fading into a beautiful night' post earlier). Good lyrics should be inseparable from the music they overlay.

Re: the power of music!
 

A day in the life of - The Beatles

Re: the power of music!
 

I'm not 100% confident that I know what you're getting at so here's the deal. I'm going to make several points which I think may be relevant. If so, feel free to reply. If not, feel complelled to reply.

All you seem to be saying is that you dislike bad poetry, which seems a rather obvious thing to say. I'm not sure what criteria you are using to seperate 'lyrics' and 'poetry' into different categories. What if a great poem was sung/read over a good piece of music. What's the difference? Also, what about rap?

So if you can apperciate lyrics when they're written down then they aren't good lyrics?

the effect of music on words can be far more effective than either on their own, e.g. dark lyrics sung over happy music.

Re: the power of music!
 

I do dislike bad poetry, I suppose, but what I'm getting at is that bad poetry might nevertheless be an excellent lyric. The difference between lyrics and poetry is a fairly simple one; as I understand it, lyrics are intended to be accompanied by music and poetry is not*. So it follows that a lyric should not be subject to the same critical appraisal as a poem. I think that, strictly speaking, a lyricist writing properly should never write a poem in any case - because he/she must always write with the music in mind. If the lyric does not match the music sonically, rhythmically or emotionally it has failed. A poem, on the other hand, is intrinsically separate and internally defined block of language in which the music should be the language itself.
My 'point' (haha you say) is: if a great poem were sung or read over a great piece of music one would be able to fully appreciate neither. They would jar, having not been written with the same purpose in mind.
I'd say good rap would be a prefect example of what I'd call a lyric: words written with for and to complement piece of music, and not poetry for those very reasons.


*Having said all this, I am aware that this distinction is a fundamentally modern one. Historically speaking, the two were combined in the figure of the bard. It becomes even more difficult to justify what I'm saying if we remember the resolutely oral (and aural) nature of poetry. Probably a lot of people would disagree with me.



Not exactly. Of course you might be able to appreciate a lyric without music. But there should feel as though there is something missing, or, once you've heard the lyric with its music, it should be obvious that the two fit together, that the meaning has been amplified in some way.
As for your point; the effect of music on words can be absolutely beautiful of course, but I'm not sure it supercedes the beauty of either individually. Mind you, who's to judge?