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  • Musical Musings...
    Flub says(Jan 10, 2010)
    Edited on March 30, 2012

    Lots of people argue about what makes a good song. And despite it being an unanswerable, opinionated subject, I wanted to find out too. So I decided to start with my favourite song and the song which got me into Paramore in the first place, "That's What You Get".

    Now, a lot of my friends who I asked found this song depressing. They find Paramore in general depressing. And, when you look at "That's What You Get" from a purely lyrical based standpoint, it is.

    However, I've never found the song depressing. In fact, I find it comforting in a strange sort of way. My personal interpretation of the lyrics has always been a sort of slap on the wrist, you shouldn't have done that sort of thing. And put in that way, the message cheers me up. And then I thought. My personal interpretation.

    What is it that causes people to interpret songs in different ways? Interpretation of a song can be hugely important to how much you like it. Some artists write songs which tell a definite story with no room left for interpretation. Others (Panic! at The Disco, for instance) write songs which can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and seem a bit abstract or silly until you attempt to consider the lyrics.

    And that leads to the next observation. When people try to understand lyrics, they try to put into a context where they can relate to the song. With this, they try to imagine the song in a real life situation where they can understand it on their own terms. And when I checked back with my friends, the ones who found it comforting like me were the ones who could translate the song into a real life context, the ones who had felt before that they had let love gain control of their lives to a foolish extent. The ones who found it depressing were the opposite. They either did not think of the amount they let love control their lives as overboard, or simply didn't have a situation where they let themselves down through love which they could relate to.

    I've gone on a bit too long anyway. My question is, what do you think? Is this just a load of waffle? Is there any substance to what I'm saying? Can you as a musical fan try to take a song and deconstruct it to see if what I say is pointless or not?

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Submitted by Flub
on January 10, 2010 - 12:05am

Lots of people argue about what makes a good song. And despite it being an unanswerable, opinionated subject, I wanted to find out too. So I decided to start with my favourite song and the song which got me into Paramore in the first place, "That's What You Get".

Now, a lot of my friends who I asked found this song depressing. They find Paramore in general depressing. And, when you look at "That's What You Get" from a purely lyrical based standpoint, it is.

However, I've never found the song depressing. In fact, I find it comforting in a strange sort of way. My personal interpretation of the lyrics has always been a sort of slap on the wrist, you shouldn't have done that sort of thing. And put in that way, the message cheers me up. And then I thought. My personal interpretation.

What is it that causes people to interpret songs in different ways? Interpretation of a song can be hugely important to how much you like it. Some artists write songs which tell a definite story with no room left for interpretation. Others (Panic! at The Disco, for instance) write songs which can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and seem a bit abstract or silly until you attempt to consider the lyrics.

And that leads to the next observation. When people try to understand lyrics, they try to put into a context where they can relate to the song. With this, they try to imagine the song in a real life situation where they can understand it on their own terms. And when I checked back with my friends, the ones who found it comforting like me were the ones who could translate the song into a real life context, the ones who had felt before that they had let love gain control of their lives to a foolish extent. The ones who found it depressing were the opposite. They either did not think of the amount they let love control their lives as overboard, or simply didn't have a situation where they let themselves down through love which they could relate to.

I've gone on a bit too long anyway. My question is, what do you think? Is this just a load of waffle? Is there any substance to what I'm saying? Can you as a musical fan try to take a song and deconstruct it to see if what I say is pointless or not?

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Fan talk