Music Thingy: My completely biased opinion on lyrics.

[eustaciavye77]

Obviously this is my opinion and probably a lot of you are presently screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOO at your screens. There may even be a few "Ben Gibbard sucks ass you douchecanoe!" type statements being flung in my direction. You have every right to disagree but please do allow me to make my argument.

A great lyricist distills something fundamental about the human condition into a work that is both personal and universal. He or she does so without obscuring the meaning behind endless layers of impenetrable metaphor. Without succumbing to cliche. Great lyrics will elicit from the listener shouts of "yes I've been there I've done that" and (and this part is my personal bias) they will do so without resorting to needlessly flowery language. Excessive use of complex language may prove that the author of the song is amazingly intelligent, but they will not communicate meaning to the average man. Ultimately, truly great lyrics must be accessible to the listener, a work of elegant simplicity. (In other words, nothing like my writing.)

I have honestly been less impressed by the singles off the most recent album "Narrow Stairs" than I am by the two previous albums. However, historically the quality of a death cab album far exceeds the quality of the singles so I'm hoping that's what I'll find when I buy it. In the meantime...

In the running with "1952 Vincent Black Lightening" by Richard Thompson for saddest song EVER I give you "What Sarah Said" off of "Plans"

and here are the lyrics:

And it came to me then that every plan
Is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself
That I’ve already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
And I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose
Than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself

‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes ‘round and everyone lift their heads
But I’m thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die

So who’s gonna watch you die?

There's nothing in this song that requires an unabridged dictionary or a degree in linguistics. Chances are if you can speak English with reasonable fluency, you can understand what he's singing about. I have never been through the experience described in the song. Listening to it illuminates for me a bit of being human that I have yet to experience. This song taps into the intersection of joy, sadness, anger and relief that is watching the life of a suffering loved one come to an end. It would be easy for a piece like this to come off as clumsy, disrespectful or needlessly emo. That it doesn't is a testament to the writer.

This concludes today's dose of musical amazingness. We now return you to my regularly scheduled prattling on.