more than meets the "i"

lyrics are very important to me. that's essentially why i got into songwriting in the first place. recently, i came across this article (reg required, see bugmenot.com for help) in the new republic about the art of blogging invading pop music. after starting out with an anecdote about johnny mercer listening to chuck berry, the author takes aim at the multitudes of singer/songwriters out there whose having nothing to say is the part and parcel of their entire efforts. this is not just aimed at the hapless local performer; he takes his criticism all the way to the top. check out this paragraph:

The indiscriminate details in songs like John Mayer's, with their couplets about standing in line at CVS, ordering take-out food, or sitting around watching CNN, fail to illuminate; they obscure. By telling us everything he sees and does, no matter how banal, the songwriter reveals nothing of himself (or herself, in the case of Aimee Mann) and the world he mutters about. There is a real-time quality to this work: instead of compressing experience, it simply reiterates it. It denies the distinction between experience and art. No music could be more appropriate to the wired culture of e-mail and cell phones, wherein every moment appears to warrant recording, one way or another.

now i think john mayer is a perfectly fine artist (and hell of a a guitar player), but i totally see this writer's point. this is reality tv as music. gone is the craft of writing, now all we have are cameras. it is the recycling of experience, unfiltered, absent of "voice" and calling it art, simply because there's a beat, some chords and the right packaging. as morton downey jr. used to say, they're "pablum pukers," throughing back up that which they just took in, without understanding its meaning or altering its composition in anyway.

granted, the tops of the charts are rarely the place to find the practitioners of the best writing. the truth is, there are plenty of artists out there who put thought into their writing and tell a story, however incomplete, which can be absorbed, yet not fully understood right away. in those, there is more below the surface than originally seems revealed. the "i" in the story is not necessarily the artist himself, which opens up so many possibilities for voice, character and point of view. even a show as concerned with minutae as "seinfeld" woudl not have been the hit it was without the forming of distinct characters.

i once read that freedy johnston's songs could be short films starring characters that should be played by steve buschemi. it's a description that's never left me. in listening to his work, as well as that of elvis costello, joe pernice, tom waits, randy newman, joe henry and others, i've learned that the way a story is told is just as important as the story itself. when both are working together, you can really get down to conveying something original.

so, for my writing and this blog, that's the guiding principle. no standing in line at the CVS for me.