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OT: Verse and Chorus Mismatch


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I've been thinking about song lyrics recently... some are quite meaningful, while others just leave you scratching your head. Paul Simon's Kodachrome came to mind yesterday and as I "sang the song" over in my head, I realized that the verses and chorus have very little to do with each other.

 

Other than the last words of verse two, "Everything looks worse in black and white," there's not much about this song that fits together.

 

I wonder if anyone else knows of a similar mismatch in the wild world of song lyrics.

 

kodachrome.jpg

 

 

When an eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a Moray.
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For me, the most annoying are those lyrics where none of the individual sentences seem to be connected in any way, and the music is bad too. Some of these songs deserve analysing the lyrics like a poem to find hidden meaning, but most of them are fake and the result of some drug trip of the writer. Very common in Hungarian pop.

Life is subtractive.
Genres: Jazz, funk, pop, Christian worship, BebHop
Wishlist: 80s-ish (synth)pop, symph pop, prog rock, fusion, musical theatre
Gear: NS2 + JUNO-G. KingKORG. SP6 at church.

 

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I Paul Simon's Kodachrome came to mind yesterday and as I "sang the song" over in my head, I realized that the verses and chorus have very little to do with each other.

 

Other than the last words of verse two, "Everything looks worse in black and white," there's not much about this song that fits together.

 

Huh. That song always made total sense to me. Of course I'm biased in that I think Paul Simon is a brilliant lyricist, plus I grew up in the Kodachrome era where all my childhood memories are captured and viewed through the lens of Kodachrome snapshots.

 

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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Of course I'm biased in that I think Paul Simon is a brilliant lyricist, plus I grew up in the Kodachrome era where all my childhood memories are captured and viewed through the lens of Kodachrome snapshots.

 

That's what it means to me also. It's about how the life you live can be messy and the life you photograph is neat (and fake).

 

A similar juxtaposition which can be jarring at first is in Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell. At first you might think she's talking about the environment, then about a relationship, then (perhaps) you realize it's about the regret you feel if you lose either one. Also a great song.

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To me, Kodachrome is a lament that the (or his) world is changing from a youthful, hopeful masquerade (of nice bright colors, greens of summer, all the world's a sunny day) to the realization that it's bound to change.

 

Joni Mitchell is one of the greatest poetic lyricists of the 20th Century. She used metaphor with such sophistication that you could dissect so many of her lyrics and find layers of interconnections and intertwined meanings... Circle Game, Coyote, Just Like This Train, A Case Of You...

 

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Rod

Here for the gear.

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Beck has some pretty random lyrics. I read an interview where he said when he wrote Loser, he was basically just standing in his kitchen writing in all the objects he could see....

 

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey

Butane in my veins so I'm out to cut the junkie

With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables

Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose

Kill the headlights and put it in neutral

Stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control

Baby's in Reno with the vitamin D

Got a couple of couches sleep on the love seat

Someone keeps sayin' I'm insane to complain

About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt

Don't believe everything that you read

You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve

So shave your face with some mace in the dark

Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park

Yo, cut it

 

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me? (double barrel buckshot)

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

 

The forces of evil in a bozo nightmare

Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber

'Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag

One's got on the pole shove the other in a bag

With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job

The daytime crap with the folksinger slop

He hung himself with a guitar string

A slab of turkey neck and it's hangin' from a pigeon wing

You can't get it right if you can't relate

Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate

And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite

That's chokin' on the splinters

 

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

(Get crazy with the Cheeze Whiz)

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

(Drive-by body pierce)

Soy

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

(I can't believe you)

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

(Sprechen Sie Deutche, baby)

Soy un perdedor

I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

(Know what I'm sayin'?)

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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The Look (Roxette, 1989)

 

Walking like a man, hitting like a hammer

she's a juvenile scam. Never was a quitter,

tasty like a rain-drop,

she's got the look.

 

Heavenly bound cause Heaven's got a number

when she's spinning me around, Kissing is a co-lour

her loving is a wild dog,

she's got the look.

 

According to the Interwebs,

The first two verses are composed of guide lyrics, with [Guitarist Per] Gessle explaining (...) that they were "words just scribbled down to have something to sing. Couldn't come up with anything better, so we kept them."

 

-Tom Williams

{First Name} {at} AirNetworking {dot} com

PC4-7, PX-5S, AX-Edge, PC361

 

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Maybe not lyrically, but musically, how about My Sharona? It starts out with that great bouncy riff - kind of 60s surf slash pre 80s new wave, then peters out into that wishy washy 70s gormless wandering guitar wibble wibble. I just relistened and realise they do come back to the opening riff at the end - maybe I've never made it that far before.
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I've been thinking about song lyrics recently... some are quite meaningful, while others just leave you scratching your head. Paul Simon's Kodachrome came to mind yesterday and as I "sang the song" over in my head, I realized that the verses and chorus have very little to do with each other.

 

Other than the last words of verse two, "Everything looks worse in black and white," there's not much about this song that fits together.

 

I wonder if anyone else knows of a similar mismatch in the wild world of song lyrics.

 

kodachrome.jpg

 

 

I will stick with your Paul Simon song. I get his creativity musically and lyrically.

I like and use metaphors all the time. Highly subjective.

 

Here is what Rolling Stone has to say:

https://groovyhistory.com/paul-simons-kodachrome

 

I hear his education or high school days were borrrrring,, or unfulfilling,,,or black and white . He did not enjoy it.

 

Then he had a realization later, possibly as an adult, and saw life in brighter colors.

Maybe its about having girl friends in his 20's and having relationships. Women have that effect

on the male ego.

 

It might be called ' coming of age ' type epiphany. He looked back and chronicled

his personal experience.

 

Only Paul Simon can best explain. If he chooses to.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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What about most of the discography of the greatest band ever?

I play and sing in a Beatles tribute, and some lyrics are just embarrassing. When they don't talk about the "boy loves girl but girl loves other boy" cliche, they are often just random words, not even adding up to a single coherent sentence. John especially loved to sing complete nonsense to make fun of the audience, and of how fans would idolize literally every piece of **** that came from them.

 

Come together is probably their most famous jumble of nonsense words, but many other songs are equal-or worse.

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I agree some of the Beatles songs were bizarre, however, as this song's title is Kodachrome, one would expect both verse and chorus to reflect that.

 

But hey...

 

You want a weird song, check out Tin Man by America.

 

 

When an eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a Moray.
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A little different but I am less impressed by a song's lyrics when all the verses just basically saying the same thing or making the same point again and again, instead of adding up to something bigger where each verse adds a new facet - Billy Joel is the writer where this has jumped out to me most often - examples that come to mind are "Honesty," "Second Wind," "Just the Way You Are," again in each of those, each verse just keeps saying the same things over and over again in slightly different ways. To give a counter-example, I think an example of the kind of better craftsmanship I'm thinking about is the oldie, a big favorite of mine, Mary Well's "My Guy." Each verse adds a different side to the story she's telling overall about how happy she is with her man. The first verse states her general thesis that she loves her man and is going to be sticking with him. The second verse more specifically talks about her commitment to be true to him and that you're not going to tempt her into infidelity with sweet talk or gifts. The third verse is about how looks aren't the point, another guy's muscles or movie-star face won't steal her away either. So the whole thing tells a story and each verse adds a little more to it. It's well thought-out and I think genuinely affecting/romantic. (There's a flaw though that bugs me and prevents the song from being quite perfect! - the repetition of the word "opinion" in the bridge.) I love the arrangement and the recording too, have always admired the record.

Rich Forman

Yamaha MOXF8, Korg Kronos 2-61, Roland Fantom X7, Ferrofish B4000+ organ module, Roland VR-09, EV ZLX12P, K&M Spider Pro stand,

Yamaha S80, Korg Trinity Plus

 

 

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