I have heard a lot of people say that they have begun listening to songs of a particular band because the lyrics ‘spoke to them’ or had ‘such a deep meaning’ and so on. Recently, I have also heard the song, She Amazed Me by Rivo Drei, a so-so popular German band. Listen to the song first before you read on. Click here to download or play the song below. It is also my This Time’s Tune.

Now, assuming that you have followed my instructions like a good child, I shall go on.  If you haven’t heard the song before, you must be wondering what is so special about it. It is an average song, with a good, catchy tune, and is, as many songs are, about love. What makes the song different (or actually not) is that the lyrics are totally crap. I am not saying this because it is my opinion or something, but the lyrics are actually crap and are the result of an ingenious experiment by Scott Adams (for those of you who don’t know him, firstly, shame on you, and secondly, he’s the creator of the Dilbert comics) that he started in his blog.  Adams decided to make a song with totally random sentences, trying to prove his theory that many musical ‘greats’ write their songs in very much a similar way. So he began with a random sentence, and his readers (his blog has a huge fan base) chipped in with other random and totally unrelated sentences. And thus, a song was born.

Here’s a snippet from the ‘lyrics’:

She spinned round and round with a frog in her ear

Whispering fountains and rocks she couldn't hear

Oh, she amazed me!

With her love, she tazed me.

Oh, she amazed me!

And it escapes me

how she outer spaced me.

Now if we haven’t known about this, I am sure most of us might have assumed the words “She spinned round and round with a frog in her ear” must have a deep inner meaning which us, simple souls, cannot comprehend. But the fact is, it means exactly the thing it seems to mean, i.e., crap. And, every musician, I am sure, writes the lyrics to his/her songs in pretty much the same way, i.e., string along random sentences that end with similar sounding words.

A very valuable lesson has thus been learnt. In words of Mr. T., I pity the fools who have had so much faith in the song writing skills of their favorite bands/singers, I pity them.  It is funny how we expect the lyrics to have greater and deeper meanings as they get crazier and crazier and seem to make no sense whatsoever. Another typical example for this is Vindicated (click to see the lyrics) by Dashboard Confessional. No ‘ooh such a deep meaning that is beyond a normal person’. Just plain crap.

Taking the cue from songs, I move on to poems and I know this is true there too. I realize that I will have literature buffs planning to ‘take me out’ for uttering these blasphemous words, but just the same. Remember, I am not saying poems (like songs) are totally crap, but all I am saying is that they too are written to mean exactly what they seem to mean. If a normal person gets one and enjoys it, then it’s good, else it’s crap that a smart guy has written just to keep his audience wondering. This leads us to Shakespeare (who was probably highly dyslexic) and I guess you get the point I am trying to make.

Final thought: Be it Madonna, Beatles, Nirvana, or even Eminem, the lyrics are always there just to support the song, they are in no way the song itself. Many have actually confessed that most of their songs mean no more than what they actually convey. It’s the music we love, not the lyrics. C’mon, a message with heavy meaning can never have rhyming words in it.  Commercial music is made just to entertain and not to convey some deep hidden expressions of the songwriter.

So to all those who go ‘ooh I started listening to this band because all of their lyrics just touched me’ or ‘ooh that band writes songs which have hidden meanings’, IN YOUR FACE!

You can read Scott Adams’ blog post here.