Entertainment For Lively Minds
New Romantics = meaningless lyrics + sincere delivery
When I was a young teenager in the Post-punk period, songs tended to have an earnest message with clever lyrics aplenty from Weller, Gang of Four, Costello, Dury, Squeeze and many more from that time. These lyrics were delivered very sincerely.
Songs with silly lyrics were also freely available. These performers gave you a clue that they didn't mean it (man) by either dressing up as wombles or generally goofing and gurning their way through TOTP.
The New Romantics then changed that. What the New Romantics did that was different was deliver meaningless lyrics with sincerity.
Witness Ultravox' "Vienna". It was the atmosphere of this song rather than the piercing lyric - which was seemingly random nonsense. Yet the words are delivered in the same manner as a policeman would when knocking on a door to deliver bad news.
Talented though he is, Midge Ure is an also-ran in the company of Simon Le Bon. His entire repertoire is of nonsense songs - but then delivered with passion. Sometimes in a lone spotlight (the slow ones). My favourite of these is "Wild Boys", which contains the quintessential New Romantic lyric :
Your telephone's been ringing
While you're dancing in the rain
So did New Romantics invent the sincere delivery of the silly song? I would like to hear of earlier examples because otherwise I will assume that I have nailed it.
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No sillier
in retrospect, than prog. Anderson meant the bollocks he sang, so did Greg Lake, so did Gabriel.
Duran Duran were ALWAYS a girls band, time should not erase that fact. So were Wham, so were Spandau Ballet. Girls don't (sweeping generalisation ahead!) worry as much about lyrics, or at least the ones I knew in the 80's didn't. They liked the pretty boys in the band, the band were pop, the girls sang along and watched the video.
I'm no Ultravox fan, but the lyrics to Vienna aren't so bad, are they? Admittedly, it's Joy-Division lite, but no worse than say "Roundabout" or "Fountain of Salmacis".
New Moon on Monday
Starts with this little couplet:
"Shake up the picture the lizard mixture
With your dance on the eventide"
Duran stuff is actually quite proggy. Weird Time signatures, Jazzy chord progressions, wibbly keyboard runs, ridiculous lyrics, it's all there.
Too right they were a teen band, but at least they were a proper band of sorts. Which do you prefer, Simon Le Bon on a Yacht with a model pretending to be a lizard while Nick Rhodes fannies about with a Polaroid camera, or the teen bands of more recent times = four faceless, identical pretty boys on stools singing 'Seasons in the F**cking Sun' by Terry Jacks or some other mawkish ballad. I know which one I prefer.
Show me a boy
who wouldn't have wanted a job in Duran Duran, and I'll show you a liar.
It's all relative
I'm far more forgiving of them today than when I was a teen in the 80's. The battle lines were drawn and we boys could afford to be a bit sniffy as we had Joy Division / Marillion / Psychic TV / Iron Maiden / Talk Talk / Nik Kershaw (!!) on our side.
Of course it's better than today, and it's true they were a proper band. I still say their lyrics were no worse than
"A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace, And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace," - Close To The Edge
"Battleships collide with me, and tell me where you are"
must have made sense when he was doing the milk round in Accrington.
Well I remember..
Nick Mannell in the time of early Duran Duran turning up to a school disco with backcombed hair, eyeliner, pointy shoes and a couple of his mum's teatowels tied to his belt. We all pissed ourselves laughing. Until, that was, he copped off with Janice Ketchell.
Just for a minute or so we contemplated taking his route. But we thought better of it and just messed his hair up and smudged his makeup. We didn't touch the teatowels, though. You didn't mess with Nick's mum under any circumstances.
I remember
reading a few years ago that there were quite a few of the New Romantic/Early 80s pop brigade who were fans, in particular, of Genesis. Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones I recall being fairly open about it whilst either Nick Rhodes or John Taylor were quoted as saying they liked them.
As an earnest prog fan circa 1980-83 such comments were latched onto as quickly as possible in a vain attempt to appear relevant to those cool kids at school who had the haircuts, make-up and frilly poet shirts. The most "hardcore" at my school were the Japan fans who, in essence, were really a glamorous cousin of Goth. They frowned on everyone else for their love of Adam, Simon and the Kemp brothers but were surprisingly quite tolerant of my attempts to ingratiate myself with them via muso mutterings about Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno, both of whom were accorded some respect for their solo work and the latter's time in Roxy.
The Japan fans round my way, despite often being the most beautiful and affected of all the Nu-Ro types, were quite nerdish when it came to how the music was put together and I soon became quite intrigued by David Sylvian who appeared to have the quiet and poetic sensibility of a pastoral progger despite his bouffant and slap. His lyrics also had the pretensions of prog but actually seemed to make sense even when singing affectedly about the apparent art of parties. It all seemed rather heroic to me in that strange teenage way when the lyrical artifice of moody men wearing mascara baritoning about China becomes an uncompromising ethical stand against the rough dystopia of middle-class life in leafy Surrey.
Wonderful description
I look forward to seeing you again in May for the next North-West Massive Meet-up, we have much to discuss in the way of Sylvian.
Can anyone explain..
..how the lyrics of Radiohead are any more or less twaddle than the lyrics of Yes?
Isn't rock built on lyrics that don't make sense?
Death by
fringe in eyes whilst juggling chainsaws:
This means
nothing to me
Oh
Vienna
hardly
ever
Earnest Twaddle,and no worse for that.
New Romantic
..was the last great teen pop movement in Britain before record companies took the reigns and most teen-pop groups started to become clones of each-other. I'm not including Britpop in this equation as I'm still not sure that the main audience here was a teen audience.
The ridiculousness of the lyrics was one of the great things about the movement and I find it hard to believe that those involved were'nt aware that the words were a trifle silly.
My favourite example has already been mentioned (Duran's "New Moon") but not far behind would be the following pair, both from the pen of one Mr G Kemp...
"Stealing cake to eat the moon..." (Instinction)
"She used to be a diplomat, but now she's down the laundromat.." (Highly Strung)
The laziest line of all time...
"Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh I want the truth to be said."
Double effandaness.
Anderson got there first...
"So the verses I've sang don't add much weight
To the story in my head, but I'm thinking I should go and write a punchline
But they're so hard to find in my comic mind
That I think I'll take a look out of the window"
(double post deleted)
.
The thing about Prog is ...
...befuddling though it was, the lyricists were creating some kind of poetry, with sincere meaning. To them, at least.
Ask Simon Le Bon about the true meaning of his lyrics, I think you will get a slighty amused "eh?". Perhaps like The Reflex:
...is a lonely child - she's waiting in the park
The Reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
and watching...over lucky clover
isn't that bizarre?
Every little thing The Reflex does
leaves you answered with a question mark
Wow,
that's, like, rilly deep, man
Suprised no one's mentioned
Don't say you're easy on me
You're about as easy as a nuclear war
Twaddle
Whilst not a fan of most of the twerps mentioned on this thread, I do feel that I should give a thumbs up to meaningless lyrics. Nothing annoys me more than someone singing about something that actually happened to them, as though it is really important and we all should be terribly interested. I'd sooner hear about a yodelling hoover (Robyn Hitchcock, naturally) than someone's failed love affair delivered in lumpen prose with tedious metaphors about candles and rain. The real skill in writing lyrics is writing something with a simple meaning that the listener can relate to over and above the singer. A good example of this would be Hank Williams entire published repertoire.
Rant over.
That's all well and good, but
where are the prawns?
Midge Ure..
..says that "Vienna" was for all intents and purposes prog.
In a way, he's right. It's bombastic,operatic has a musical gear shift and features violin.
The only job I'd have wanted in Duran Duran was the bloke turning off the PA..while they were playing.
Sheer Brilliance
"Grim visages and prestiges
Festoon upon the morrow
where the wakeling bride
garlands her sorrow
Is there no tribute of dandelions
no facade of machine wisdom
Undone by the waters meet
As Morgana smiles once more
As we wait the heralding pipes
it is the wonderment we sing
the excavation of the underling king
of Pantheocrates"
and which one of us
hasn't found ourselves thinking that at some time or another?
Run that by me again Gaz?
Gary Kemp even went so far as to mint his own word - 'Instinction' and he's a dab hand with a bonkers phrase : 'Heart Like a Sky' / 'She Loved Like Diamond' / 'Paint Me Down' / 'Age of Blows'
Anyone here like The Human League?
Not strictly New Romantic (and who, apart from Steve Strange, was?)
but check this out from the poptastic 'Sound of the Crowd'
"The shades from a pencil peer
Pass around
A fold in an eyelid brushed with fear
The lines on a compact guide
Pass around
A hat with alignment worn inside"
pedantry on a lonely platform
Yes, love the Human League. I always thought it was:
A hat with a line that's worn inside
Deep lyrics.
Always sound to me like the sort of stuff young men might come up with if they were trying to appear deep and meaningful in the vague hope of impresing women and getting a shag.
Given that the beds of most of the New Romantic bandmembers needed specially extended headboards to make space for extra notches, I'd have said they didn't do too badly.