The Inarticulate Narrator
I got in an argument recently with a friend about lyric-writing. That friend is an actual musician and songwriter, so it was a pretty one-sided argument, but I remain convinced I made a valid point.
The argument focused on a song by the band Fountains of Wayne called "Hackensack." The song is sung from the point of view of a sad sack stuck in his hometown in New Jersey, remembering the beautiful girl from high school who went on to become a star in Hollywood.
My friend was annoyed by the song, because he felt as though the lyrics were hokey and inarticulate, particularly this verse:
"That's the rhyme they came up with?" my friend asked indignantly. He was particularly upset because Fountains of Wayne songs often have quite clever lyrics, and he felt as though the band wasn't even trying on this one -- that they'd come up with a nice melody and that the band's lyric-writer had spent maybe five minutes on the words.
I disagreed, and tried inarticulately to make a case for the use of the inarticulate narrator in first-person songwriting. Most songs are written in the first person, though in many cases the character narrating the song isn't a character at all -- he or she is the singer, or someone just like the singer, or perhaps a personification of teenage angst or lust. But certain songwriters write songs in the voices of characters quite different from themselves -- Bruce Springsteen comes to mind, or John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats.
Like those writers, Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger writes a lot of songs in which he adopts a narrative voice different from his own. Sometimes that character is clever, overly so in fact, as in the somewhat fussy lyrics for the band's song "No Better Place," in which a lovelorn Mahattanite describes himself as being "Awake and trying not to be, wrapped around my pillow like a prawn." But sometimes that character is kind of dull-witted. The narrator of "Hackensack" isn't exactly stupid, but he is self-deluding and beaten-down. The plaintive chorus, delivered, remember, by a random dude in Jersey to a TV star who surely doesn't even remember his name, a girl he only knew from sitting together with her in one high-school class, goes:
In light of how badly this character's been trampled by his life, I argued to my friend, it makes perfect sense that his description of his current job -- refinishing hardwood floors for his dad's company -- would be halting and half-assed. If you were that guy, what would you be able to find to say about that job while singing to the girl of your dreams?
My friend disagreed. If I read his argument correctly, he felt that a songwriter has an obligation to put great care into his lyrics and make them worthwhile regardless of the level of articulation his narrator possesses. It's up to a songwriter to take a character's feelings and make them artful, whether the character would relate them artfully or not.
To me, the pleasures of "Hackensack" lie in the tension between the gorgeous melody and the clumsiness of the narrator's voice. To my friend, the gorgeous melody is undercut by the clumsiness of the narrator's voice. Who is right? Listen and decide for yourself.
Another song that uses inarticulate narration in an interesting way is by a band called the Hold Steady. It's called "Chillout Tent," and tells the story of a guy and a girl who meet cute while coming down from bad drug trips in a music festival's recovery tent. The majority of the song is told by a third-person limited-omniscient narrator, whose voice is pretty similar to the voice in almost all of the songs written by the Hold Steady's Craig Finn. Finn, like fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan, has an instantly recognizable narrative voice, as well as a set of recurring images and tropes marking nearly every song he's written (as memorably spoofed on the music blog Idolator).
The third-person narration in this song is a little different than most Hold Steady songs, though. Mostly lacking Finn's typical verbosity, the narrator tells the story of how the girl got into the chillout tent:
The narrator explains, similarly straightforwardly, the story of the boy:
Bored, the guy takes more hits of acid than recommended, and with a wry bit of affection for his foolhardy character, the narrator tells what happens next:
This narration is interrupted periodically by two different voices -- those of the boy and girl themselves, sung not by Finn but by a male and female singer, who sing in perfectly plain English their own versions of the story. "I got really high and then I came to in the chillout tent," she sings. "Everything was spinning and I came to in the chillout tent," he sings. They both add an observant detail: "They gave me oranges and cigarettes."
Finn's third-person narrator explains that the couple hooks up. The song ends with the two lovers singing the stories they'll tell their friends later. "He was kind of cute, we kinda kicked it in the chillout tent," she sings. "And I never saw that boy again." He sings, "She was pretty cool, we kinda kicked it in the chillout tent. And I never saw that girl again."
Unlike the narrator of "Hackensack," you get the feeling that these kids might have the words to express how they truly feel, but they choose not to use them -- they're inarticulate by choice. Instead, they downplay the day's significance, but the grandeur of the music and the echoes of each one's words in the other's give their offhand explanations an unexpected sadness.
Fountains of Wayne: Hackensack"
from Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)
The Hold Steady: "Chillout Tent"
from Boys and Girls in America (2006)
The argument focused on a song by the band Fountains of Wayne called "Hackensack." The song is sung from the point of view of a sad sack stuck in his hometown in New Jersey, remembering the beautiful girl from high school who went on to become a star in Hollywood.
My friend was annoyed by the song, because he felt as though the lyrics were hokey and inarticulate, particularly this verse:
I used to work in a record store
Now I work for my Dad
Stripping the paint off of hardwood floors
The hours are pretty bad
"That's the rhyme they came up with?" my friend asked indignantly. He was particularly upset because Fountains of Wayne songs often have quite clever lyrics, and he felt as though the band wasn't even trying on this one -- that they'd come up with a nice melody and that the band's lyric-writer had spent maybe five minutes on the words.
I disagreed, and tried inarticulately to make a case for the use of the inarticulate narrator in first-person songwriting. Most songs are written in the first person, though in many cases the character narrating the song isn't a character at all -- he or she is the singer, or someone just like the singer, or perhaps a personification of teenage angst or lust. But certain songwriters write songs in the voices of characters quite different from themselves -- Bruce Springsteen comes to mind, or John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats.
Like those writers, Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger writes a lot of songs in which he adopts a narrative voice different from his own. Sometimes that character is clever, overly so in fact, as in the somewhat fussy lyrics for the band's song "No Better Place," in which a lovelorn Mahattanite describes himself as being "Awake and trying not to be, wrapped around my pillow like a prawn." But sometimes that character is kind of dull-witted. The narrator of "Hackensack" isn't exactly stupid, but he is self-deluding and beaten-down. The plaintive chorus, delivered, remember, by a random dude in Jersey to a TV star who surely doesn't even remember his name, a girl he only knew from sitting together with her in one high-school class, goes:
And I will wait for you
As long as I need to
And if you ever get back to Hackensack
I'll be here for you
In light of how badly this character's been trampled by his life, I argued to my friend, it makes perfect sense that his description of his current job -- refinishing hardwood floors for his dad's company -- would be halting and half-assed. If you were that guy, what would you be able to find to say about that job while singing to the girl of your dreams?
My friend disagreed. If I read his argument correctly, he felt that a songwriter has an obligation to put great care into his lyrics and make them worthwhile regardless of the level of articulation his narrator possesses. It's up to a songwriter to take a character's feelings and make them artful, whether the character would relate them artfully or not.
To me, the pleasures of "Hackensack" lie in the tension between the gorgeous melody and the clumsiness of the narrator's voice. To my friend, the gorgeous melody is undercut by the clumsiness of the narrator's voice. Who is right? Listen and decide for yourself.
Another song that uses inarticulate narration in an interesting way is by a band called the Hold Steady. It's called "Chillout Tent," and tells the story of a guy and a girl who meet cute while coming down from bad drug trips in a music festival's recovery tent. The majority of the song is told by a third-person limited-omniscient narrator, whose voice is pretty similar to the voice in almost all of the songs written by the Hold Steady's Craig Finn. Finn, like fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan, has an instantly recognizable narrative voice, as well as a set of recurring images and tropes marking nearly every song he's written (as memorably spoofed on the music blog Idolator).
The third-person narration in this song is a little different than most Hold Steady songs, though. Mostly lacking Finn's typical verbosity, the narrator tells the story of how the girl got into the chillout tent:
She drove down from Bowdoin with a carload of girlfriends
To meet some boys and maybe eat some mushrooms
And she did and she got sick
Now she's feeling way too shaky
She doesn't want to tell the doctor
Everything she's taking...
The narrator explains, similarly straightforwardly, the story of the boy:
It was his first day off in forever, man
And the festival seemed like a pretty good plan --
Cruise some chicks and get a suntan.
Bored, the guy takes more hits of acid than recommended, and with a wry bit of affection for his foolhardy character, the narrator tells what happens next:
So now my man he ain't that bored anyways
When the paramedics found him he was shaking on the side of the stage.
This narration is interrupted periodically by two different voices -- those of the boy and girl themselves, sung not by Finn but by a male and female singer, who sing in perfectly plain English their own versions of the story. "I got really high and then I came to in the chillout tent," she sings. "Everything was spinning and I came to in the chillout tent," he sings. They both add an observant detail: "They gave me oranges and cigarettes."
Finn's third-person narrator explains that the couple hooks up. The song ends with the two lovers singing the stories they'll tell their friends later. "He was kind of cute, we kinda kicked it in the chillout tent," she sings. "And I never saw that boy again." He sings, "She was pretty cool, we kinda kicked it in the chillout tent. And I never saw that girl again."
Unlike the narrator of "Hackensack," you get the feeling that these kids might have the words to express how they truly feel, but they choose not to use them -- they're inarticulate by choice. Instead, they downplay the day's significance, but the grandeur of the music and the echoes of each one's words in the other's give their offhand explanations an unexpected sadness.
Fountains of Wayne: Hackensack"
from Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)
The Hold Steady: "Chillout Tent"
from Boys and Girls in America (2006)
Labels: yukebox
posted by Dan at 10:14 AM
2 Comments:
great post. of course you're right in the argument. your pal shouldn't apply such rigid notions towards songwriting. that said, i think fountains of wayne usually suffer from the opposite problem: being clever to the point of cutesy.
i agree with Hans.... FOW are so consciously clever, so contrived in that snideness, as to be annoying.
But there isn't one way to do anything.... viva la difference.
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