Case Study: "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath

            This song, I think, needs no introduction. If you haven’t heard it before, hear it now. If you have, hear it again.

The lyrics are unlikely to make sense to you unless you know that this song was written not about the superhero Iron Man, but about a science fiction story in which a man travels to a future in which, to his horror, he discovers a frightful apocalypse. When he returns to his time, he finds that he cannot get anyone to believe him. Things are not helped by the fact that the magnetic field he passed through during his return journey turned him into metal, rendering him mute and making his attempts to warn mankind of the impending danger markedly comical. It was the 60’s. Don’t ask.

Driven mad by the laughter and scorn of his fellow humans, the metallic prophet flies into a fury and takes his revenge on the civilization that rejected him. Only when he has vented his rage does he realize that he was responsible for the apocalypse that he foresaw. All of the above is according to Geezer Butler, who wrote the lyrics and generally seemed to have a better idea of what he was doing than his work would otherwise suggest.

            Musically, the track is very strong. The riff is genuinely interesting and the instrumental work is first-rate. In fact, it is very possible to enjoy this song immensely so long as you make very sure to ignore the lyrics, which are incredibly bad. How bad are they? They are worse than the lyrics to Deep Purple’s “Black Night,” and the lyrics to Deep Purple’s “Black Night” were intentionally written to be the worst lyrics the band could think of.

            Let’s take this line-by-line...

Has he lost his mind?

Can he see or is he blind?

            The first thing you will notice in listening to this song is that the vocal line is just the riff, delivered in the irritatingly strained vocals of Ozzy Osbourne. There is nothing inherently wrong with the reuse of a musical phrase, but such repetition places extra responsibility on the lyrics, which are now unenviably saddled with being the sole providers of surprise and nuance. Unsurprisingly, the lyrics run into problems after just two lines. First, while there is nothing wrong with the question as to whether the subject of the song has lost his mind, the query is just a little too vague to compensate for the lack of surprise in the music. The next line is a textbook illustration of pointless restatement. Can he see? An intriguing question. Or is he blind? Yes, that would be the alternative to being able to see. The line simply asks the same question twice, once positively and once negatively for no other reason than to fill its syllable quota.

Can he walk at all

Or if he moves will he fall?

            First off, the rhyme of “all” and “fall” in a plain couplet is childishly simplistic. The verse also falls into the same trap we saw above and asks a question twice, slightly rephrased. This would probably also be a good time to talk about collaborative coherency and syllable stretching. It is mightily tempting, when syllable count falls short, to simply stretch out vowels until they get you where you need to be. However, this is a temptation that must be resisted at all costs. In this couplet alone, we see “or” stretched over two notes (and rather awkwardly at that), only for “moves” to find itself stretched over three full notes. The result is a verse that sounds like it was written by a creative team consisting of a five-year-old and a particularly insightful gust of wind.

Is he alive or dead?

Has he thoughts within his head?

We’ll just pass him there.

Why should we even care?

He was turned to steel

In the great magnetic field

When he travelled time

For the future of mankind.

            If you already know the story that the song centers around, these lyrics make a trifle more sense than they would otherwise, not that this is saying much, but even the lyrical problems are getting repetitive now… “Is he alive?” I don’t know. “Or dead?” yes, that is certainly the other possibility… “Are there thoughts within his head?” They’re certainly much more likely to be there than in his gallbladder… “We’ll just pass him there,” why add a “there” to the perfectly coherent statement “we’ll just pass him,” or “we’ll just pass him by?” Who says “we’ll just pass him there?”

            “Steel” and “field” don’t actually rhyme, nor do “time” and “mankind.” And don’t we mean “when he travelled through time” rather than the incomprehensible “when he travelled time?” Maybe it’s just me.

Nobody wants him,

He just stares at the world.

Planning his vengeance

That he soon will unfold.

            This verse actually isn’t bad. It isn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it sounds like it was written by a grown adult. There is no syllable stretching, no awkward expansions or condensations of previously meaningful statements. My only quibble is that “world” does not, as it happens, rhyme with “unfold.” I have expressed my blanket disapproval of using “world” in song lyrics at all in a previous post, but anyway:

Now the time is here

For Iron Man to spread fear.

            …And we’re back, ladies and gentlemen. The music clashes horribly with the natural emphases of the sentence, “for” and “man” get stretched over two and then three syllables respectively, and on the whole we’re back to the lyrical ineptitude that characterized the opening stanzas of the song. I was blindsided, therefore, when the next lyric was:

Vengeance from the grave,

Kills the people he once saved.

            There’s actually a good lyric in this song! True, “grave” and “saved” don’t strictly rhyme, but the couplet manages with gleeful vindictiveness to sum up something approaching the central irony of the story. The high from this verse is often enough to get me through the rest of the song, a desperate slog though it is from here on out:

Nobody wants him

They just turn their heads.

Nobody helps him

Now he has his revenge.

            If I may simply note that “heads” and “revenge” don’t even come close to rhyming, we can move on.

Heavy boots of lead

Fills his victims full of dread.

Running as fast as they can,

Iron Man lives again!

            To start out with, who the hell says “dread” anymore? When did “fill them full” become a phrase in the English language? And when did Iron Man live the first time that this time he “lives again?” These are questions to which we may never know the answers. Nor do I, for one, particularly want to.

Clever vs. Telling Lyrics, or The Gap Between Noel Coward and Spring Awakening

            I posit that lyrics (that is to say, good lyrics) tend to fall somewhere between two polar ends: clever and telling. Clever lyrics can be found in their purest form in the work of lyricists like Noel Coward and W.S. Gilbert. No plumbing of emotional depths is even attempted in such lyrics, for they are dazzling feats of wordplay that tend to be sung either by the lyricist himself (as in Coward’s case) or by characters acting as a surrogate for the lyricist (as in much of Gilbert’s work). Simply put, the lyricist becomes the star.

            Telling lyrics belong in a different class entirely. Paying little attention to verbal aesthetics, they seek to express the pure emotions of a character without any reference to the lyricist. This category can be subdivided into two types of telling lyrics, the elegantly simple (as in the work of Oscar Hammerstein) and the irritatingly self-absorbed (as in Steven Sater’s work on Spring Awakening). 

         
           Lyricists who can move comfortably between the two are the best off of anybody, but even their examples can prove all-too-instructive. Stephen Sondheim's lyrics almost invariably combine dramatic emotion with marked intelligence and wit. Being very clever, he also excels at writing purely witty and sparklingly fun lyrics, like the cut version of “We’re Gonna Be Alright” from Do I Hear A Waltz?.
           Unfortunately, such irrepressible intelligence does not lend itself to writing purely telling lyrics, as the musical Passion demonstrated. It is a show with some truly admirable moments, and it is certainly possessed of one of the most musically beautiful scores that Sondheim ever wrote, but you need look no further than the song “Loving You” to find the kind of awkwardly maudlin statements that unfortunately define the show. From the opening salvo of “Loving you is not a choice/it’s who I am,” you know what you’re in for and only Donna Murphy's sublime performance as Fosca can elevate the material.

This example should serve not to denigrate telling lyrics; Sondheim’s failure in the area is not a consequence of any deficiency in the form, but rather in the fact that Sondheim never had the same faculty for simplistic lyrical beauty that was always apparent in the work of his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein. Sondheim is a lyricist with an unparalleled felicity of expression, but that expression is a function of his intelligence. Take away the intelligence, and not much is left.

            However, telling lyrics can have extraordinary power. Tim Rice, like him or not, is one of the most versatile and workmanlike lyricists alive, just at home in the world of rock-and-roll as he is in Argentina or Jerusalem. His lyrics for Jesus Christ Superstar find him at his most unabashedly emotional. Fortunately, Rice has a talent for the simple but powerful sentiments that define the best lyrics of the telling variety, and it is with this example that I leave you for today.

Collaborative Coherency, or I'm Kinda Busy

            To begin with, I had better define collaborative coherency. It is simply the term I use to describe the extent to which lyrics must coordinate themselves with the music they have been paired with. It is an essential but too-often overlooked concept.

There are two levels of collaborative coherency. The first and most basic level, which this article will seek to tackle, is simply a matter of professionalism: matching musical rhythms with natural speaking rhythms and ensuring that emphases supplied by pitch do not disrupt speech—stress coherency. A good example of how not on pain of death to do this is Lady Gaga’s “Telephone:”

The music isn’t bad, but Gaga appears to have given little or no thought as to how much the music disrupts the lyrics. Take the line, “I’m kinda busy.” First, read that sentence out loud, just as you normally would in conversation, particularly the last word. Unless you suffer from a crippling speech impediment, your pronunciation of “busy” will place emphasis on the first syllable and leave the second syllable briskly clipped. But then look at how Gaga sets the word; both syllables are given a rhythmically equivalent setting, contorting the normal emphases of the word into a tortured monorhythm. Given that, a lovely band-aid solution would have been to place the second syllable of the word “busy” on a lower pitch, thus giving it an appropriately subordinate position. However, Gaga uses the same pitch for both notes, leaving the awkward rhythm to fend for itself.

A subtler example comes from the beginning of the same song. First, read out “Hello, hello baby, you called, I can’t hear a thing” as you would in normal conversation, or as normal a conversation as it is possible to have when you are narrating your beaux’s telephone habits. You will tend to place natural pauses between phrases, breaking up the sentence into coherent chunks. Gaga will have no truck with this, opting instead to render the sentence as one continuous string of speech, absent anything resembling a pause. Before, the flaw was merely jarring. Here it turns the entire line into indecipherable gibberish.

As a general rule, the natural rhythms and emphases of the music and the lyrics must be coordinated if they are to be yoked to each other. If you do break collaborative coherency, it must be deliberate and must serve a purpose…but that is interactive coherency—another article for another time.

Line Order Part 2, or One of the Innumerable Reasons Why Billy Joel is Awesome

            Previously, High School Musical demonstrated more than adequately how not to arrange lyrical lines for maximum effect, but it would be unfair not to give an example of how to do this well. First, I feel that I must preemptively apologize for my love of all things Billy Joel. While for a large part this obsession is sentimental, I maintain that Mr. Joel is one of the best pop lyricists of all time. If you are not a fan, by all means don’t stay silent. Just be aware that this is an issue on which I will not be swayed.

            The example I wish to draw from Joel’s oeuvre is the song “Christie Lee” from the album An Innocent Man:

On the first interlude, Joel starts with the setup line “The man knew the Burn like the Bible/you know the man could blow an educated axe.” The heavy and obscure music slang is bizarre at first glance, especially for those unfamiliar with the relevant lingo. He also ends the line with a lyrically troublesome word, “axe,” and one is left to wonder whether he couldn’t have chosen a more easily rhymable word.

But when the second line comes, the reasoning behind the contortion not only becomes clear but pays off in spectacular fashion: “He didn’t see that Christie Lee was a woman/who didn’t need another lover/all she wanted was the sax.” Not only does he hit us with the rhythmic rat-tat-tat-tat and slightly slanted internal rhyming of “another lover,” but he then goes straight for the kill with that rarest of inventions: a pun that doesn’t come off as lame. Had he thrown the clever line out first, the lyric would have ended on a sour note as it would have been all too clear that Joel was desperately trying to make room for his wit. As it is, Joel wisely lets the lamer line build lyrical tension in the first line, and then throws his one-two punch in the second.

You can argue the merits of Joel's comic concept all day, but I include the lyric as an example of a verse that, given its concept, is as ideally arranged as it can be.

Sound Lyrics, or Ga-Ga Ooh-La-La

           While further pondering the points of overlap between poetry and lyrics, I realized that in my previous post I had failed to cover an important idea: sound lyrics. That is, lyrics that are written almost exclusively for the way they sound. Let’s start with an extreme example:

Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-Roma-ma-ah!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!
Want your bad romance.

            If you can understand that, stay away from me.

But, of course, Gaga doesn’t use those odd vowel sounds to convey meaning, she uses them because they play with the ear. Syd Barrett used the same method to craft the lyrics to early-period Pink Floyd songs like “Astronomy Domine.” Alright, you say, but that’s Lady Gaga and Syd Barrett, does anyone relatively sane use this technique? As a matter of fact, yes…

            “Stairway To Heaven” is and for a long time has been one of my all-time favorite songs, but let’s look at some of the lyrics:

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now,
It's just a spring clean for the May queen.

            As profound as those words might have seemed when I was 15, when viewed with an ice-cold eye they don’t make a lick of sense. But, of course, Robert Plant doesn’t use those odd sentences to convey meaning—he admits that the lyrics to the song were almost entirely improvised—they work because the sound of the words alone is so evocative. Inspired by a trip to Wales, they strike just the right tone to become something approaching a musical instrument in their own right. Paul McCartney often does the same thing, most famously in the grating "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."

            I mention all of this because it constitutes a major oversight on my part. In their sound lyrics, pop songs edge closer to poetry than I had given them credit for. Such lyrics (along with those by greats like Roger Waters or Bob Dylan) hew very close to the poetic tradition. However, I still assert that most lyrics (yes, including most pop lyrics) tend more toward the theatrical than the poetic.

            Thanks for the feedback on the last post and I look forward to treating such issues at greater length in the future.

A Division of Forms, or Poetry is Poetry and Lyrics are Lyrics and Never The Twain Shall Meet

            You would be justified in regarding statement contained within the secondary title above with a certain degree of skepticism. After all, poetry and lyrics do bear some striking superficial similarities. Both are often rhymed. Both are often rhythmic. Both can achieve an elegance virtually unmatched in prose.

            The problem is that there the similarities stop. Once you begin looking at concrete examples, any claim of equivalency between the two forms instantly deflates. Let us take for our example one of the most well-known poems in the American repertoire: Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A lovely poem, I think you will agree, but try writing a melody for it. Rhythmically, of course, it is possible to do so, but tonally it is impracticable. Try setting the poem’s ending to music; you will fail miserably. Like much of Frost’s poetry, it relies on stark understatement for its effect. Adding music would be, at best, an egregious redundancy. It does nothing for the poem that the poem does not already do for itself, and better.

            But there is a more fundamental difference at work here. Poetry, by and large, is intended to be read. In revealing its meaning it burns slowly. The poet is permitted to be elusive and even vague, safe in the knowledge that the reader will be able to read a troublesome line repeatedly and eventually divine its meaning. The lyricist does not have this luxury. Lyrics are a much more immediate art form by virtue of being almost exclusively heard rather than read. When you only have one shot at communicating your meaning to an audience, you had damn well better say what you want to and say it clearly.

            So there is a divide in the required level of clarity in either form, but I would also argue that on a more fundamental level, while poetry is predominately an independent art form, lyrics must by definition be collaborative. Lyrics are not meant to stand alone, nor should that be your goal as a lyricist. The lyrics and the music must combine to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Neither side is at the mercy of the other; rather, the relationship is markedly symbiotic. Each complements and improves the other, and far from rejecting the notion of lyrics as art, this fact affirms it. The measure of a great poet is in the words alone, but the measure of a great lyricist lies in how entirely the words are wrapped up with the music. It is this symbiosis that defines and establishes lyrics as their own artistic entity.

Line Order Part 1, or One of The Innumerable Reasons Why "High School Musical" is Terrible

            We’ve all been there; you’ve thought of a brilliant little line that works perfectly with your rhythmic scheme. The only problem is that the final word of the line has almost no perfect rhymes. As we must take perfect rhymes as a ground rule (I will talk more about this in the future), damage control is now the main priority. Say you manage to put together a workable but by no means particularly good line out of one of the two or three rhymes for your problem word. You now have two lyrical lines, one of them getting along swimmingly, the other still floating but otherwise dead in the water (like an overextended metaphor). This is what I mean by damage control: we must find a way to reduce emphasis on the lame line.

            There are plenty of musical ways to do this. If you construct your melody carefully, you can imperceptibly but very effectively move the emphasis away from a particular word or syllable, but there is a much simpler and much more effective way of achieving this effect: simply place the lame line first. The central problem is that you are saddled with accommodating your good line. The greatest lyrical emphasis always falls on the last line of the verse, and so that is the place where you must deposit your clever line so as to avoid the (admittedly correct) impression that you are accommodating it.

            A terrific example of how not to do this comes from my old enemy, High School Musical. In the closing number, insufferably titled “We’re All In This Together,” we are forced to swallow the lines “Together, together, together everyone/Together, together, come on let’s have some fun.” We will leave alone for the moment the imbecilic redundancy of the “together” portion of the lyric, favoring instead the rhymes “everyone” and “fun.” The word “fun,” in general, is a word that should be used in lyrics seldom, if ever. I am hard-pressed to think of a lyric sporting that word that is not diminished by its presence. “Everyone” is the better rhyme by far. It is multi-syllabic (always good for a second rhyme), its natural rhythms match those of the music reasonably well. Though the song itself is beyond salvation, think of how much better that verse would be, were the lyrics “Together, together, c’mon, let’s have some fun/Together, together, together everyone.” Still not good, perhaps—there is little to be gained in dressing the wounds of a corpse—but still markedly better.

Next time: A positive example, courtesy of Mr. Billy Joel.