On Hokum in Songwriting

Over predictably delicious food at The Tin Shed (excellent fare, bad website) with Sam Alexander, the two of us took a break from business discussions to talk music. Specifically, about lyrics, irony, and whether R.E.M. could be better if Stipe would only loosen the grip during these later stages. The answer, according to Mr Alexander, is yes.

A couple of quick notes that I’m taking away from this conversation:

First, that lyrics and delivery are important in different, and sometimes oppositional, ways. Let’s oversimplify our conversation, which was itself an oversimplificaiton of the issue: we’ll define a binary of “sincere vs. ironic” for both lyrics and delivery (voice). That being the case, a singer can deliver one of four ways: sincere lyrics and sincere voice; sincere lyrics and ironic voice; ironic lyrics with a sincere voice; and ironic lyrics with an ironic voice. Sam put Radiohead in the second camp, noting that the listener is hard pressed to tell when Yorke is singing about something that truly matters to him, whether he’s underplaying a true emotion, or whether he’s overplaying words that carry little weight.

The central question here being: how does a band (specifically a band in Portland in 2009) position itself on the earnest > ironic scale? The wink is already there, so does Sam’s band (No Kind of Rider) address the wink, the self-conscious late aughts knowledge that, for example, if their work is reviewed by an important arbiter of music cool like Pitchfork, it will likely be on intellectual and historical grounds rather than based on the quality of emotions evoked? Apparently there’s only one answer for Sam. Yes. The question should really be, “How does a band like No Kind of Rider address the wink?” Tough question.

Sam talks about drafting his work. The first output might be entirely personal, an outpouring of a subjective experience. But then the editor sets in. As a band with an expectation of being listened to by a specific audience, there’s a moment of self-reflection. How will this sound to our listenership? What of my feelings will come across as Trite? As we all know, it’s difficult to have unique experiences when coming up against the big things (losing love, feeling alone, etc.), and it’s usually the big things that get us writing in the first place. So there’s a natural editorial process, wherein the writer of songs tries to protect himself against Hokum. And good thing, too, because otherwise we’d have even more songs like Train’s “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me),” which makes me want to throw up in someone else’s mouth.

So the question I won’t try to answer here is, “What is the value of that imposed round of edits”? That’s for another day, another conversation.

Second, that musicians, owing to the fundamental importance of physical presence during a performance, have a pressing need to win attention and accolades early in their careers. Bands tend to break apart, especially if they have an extreme of success (very much or very little). And youth can play an important role in a band’s viability, especially to the show-going public.

I sometimes wish I felt more of that pressure to create something now and try some ideas in public rather than incubate those ideas and delude myself into thinking that it’s better to hold on and polish and wait until I can’t find a single expected or boring or trite thing in a certain piece. Of course, in such an instance I would wait forever and never publish a thing.

I guess in a way this post, which has taken me all of ten minutes to write (and probably reads like it) is one small step in the direction of getting a thought out there and seeing where it takes me. Good conversation. Until later, thank you for reading.