Brand New to Release New Song on Friday • Page 8

I Am A Nightmare Splash

Vinyl is up for pre-order and comes with an immediate digital download.

 

Yeah, the harmonies seemed super phoned in as well. I'll be excited if the song goes verse-chorus-verse-chorus-TOTALSURPRISE, but if it's just another identical chorus at the end, I'll be bummed. Not that I hate that structure all the time. When it's invisible, it works all the time. But a chorus has to be good enough to justify repetition, and that's hard to justify when the chorus is already by itself repetitive.

 

@Mr. Serotonin Welp. It's basically exactly what I feared, but it worked better than I expected. The bridge was easily the best part of the song, so that really elevated the choruses surrounding it. Still don't like the harmonies on the chorus, but the harmonies throughout the bridge are super cool, unordinary, and, well, the opposite of "phoned in."

 

Yeah, this is what I thought it was gonna be too, haha. It's not bad, just kinda bland to me @Chase Tremaine

I'm sure there will be better/more interesting stuff on the record though.

 

I've only been able to listen through once. I enjoyed it, but want to know the lyrics. Not a fan of the "g-damn" (if that's what it is) as I've always enjoyed their albums, except for YFW, being "clean" as far as lyrics are concerned.

 

Huh. I didn't notice that myself. I prefer cleanliness though, too!

 

WHAT RECORD, haha

 

You know what I mean.

 

Didn't know some people even had a preference for profanity vs. not on record. It makes no difference to me if the music is good.

 

I find profanity distracting in music. There's something much more intimate about the experience that I find profanity jarring.

It doesn't bother me in any other art, but for some reason it does in music.

 

Fair enough. I think it can really accentuate music in some circumstances, but there are also times when it's obviously forced and those are always hard to listen to.

 

I like this less with each listen, and I hated it on the first one. I really hope the album is good and this is just a dud.

 

If the music is good enough, it doesn't bother me one bit. I would never complain about the language on Kendrick's TPAB, for example, or even on Gatsbys American Dream's Volcano. But there are also plenty of times where language that our culture deems "foul" or "obscene" seem to me unnecessary. Because of the cultural value of these words, they carry a largely negative connotation that can't really be removed, regardless of the context. The use of profanity also seems very lazy on occasion, like a cop-out, as if there's a better way the lyricist could've phrased something.

 

Yeah, sometimes it's absolutely gratuitous and that bugs me as well.

 

As a Christian, I find "g-d" worse than any profanity. Once I understand the lyricism, I believe I could reconcile the language within the context of the song.

 

Agreed. It comes across differently in carefully written lyrics as opposed to realistic dialogue, or what's supposed to appear as "realistic" and "off-the-cuff" dialogue in films.

Like, if someone cussed a lot in daily speech but had perfectly clean songs, it would be totally normal. If someone had generally clean speech but super filthy lyrics, I'd be super thrown off.

As @FTank was getting at, if there's going to be the F word somewhere on an album, I'd hope that it wouldn't be flippantly thrown in on a random verse but instead would appear at the most frustrated or emotionally heightened point of an album, the type of moment where, for example, your parent might have accidentally cussed around you when you were a kid. Or something like that, haha. Now I'm just rambling.

 

Funny you should say that. The first time I ever heard "Jesus Christ," I didn't pay attention to the lyrics enough to tell that the man himself was being referred to. I thought the song was just using his name as an expletive over and over again, which bugged the crap out of me.

On a side note, I'm totally with you about the use of "God" in lyrics, (the worst offender ever is P!ATD's "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" amirite??), I personally think that this issue isn't at all what the 3rd commandment is referring to.

 

I curse so much that I don't even notice cursing in lyrics at all...and it makes me wonder how I would write lyrics if I were to write songs.

 

Aaron's f-bomb in the most recent mewithoutYou album took me off guard, but it's context was intelligent and grew on me.

 

This topic is sort of interesting to me, as someone who does write songs especially. I try to avoid swearing a lot, even in daily speech but sometimes I feel inclined too. I have a song called July which has "fuck around" in the chorus (Which plays three times) and I'm worried it will throw people off like you said. At the same time though, it's very rare that swearing actually bothers me personally, even in music. I don't think "shit" is anything but another word. Words that do piss me off though are ones that cause derogatory associations, such as obvious ones like "bitch" and the n word, or homophobic slurs. Or less common ones like "retarded" because my youngest brother has down syndrome.

 

I say the "fuck" in one of my songs. It's in the second line on the first verse, and is meant to catch people off guard. It does it's job. It's an angry song lyrically, with a sing-songy melody. @Benjamin Lee

 

Yes good point slurs are completely different than curse words, IMO. I use "bitch" all the time in person as a woman there's a bit of a "reclaiming" edge to it but I would never put it in a song

 

Yeah, slurs aren't okay, except in reclamation type situations. Obviously I'm not gonna criticize a hip hop artist for using the N word. One lyric that's always made me uncomfortable is when Green Day uses the N word in American Eulogy; it's clear they're referring to someone else's opinion/speech, but I still don't know how to feel about it.

 

That's another thing to I suppose, for people who are the "butt of the joke", I have noticed some say the slurs more I guess for the reclaiming edge (such as the n word in rap, and "bitch" as a women), I never knew why so thank you for a kind of answer. I grew up in a really religious home, and it pissed me off a lot my parents were fine with people yelling "***" at gay people, while not being fine with a movie saying "shit". I've always viewed stuff as like "people first", and even if I don't understand or agree with anyone I still treat them like I would anyone who I "get along with", and it makes me actually depressed when I think about how people treat, and refer to others as a society at times. I have some friend who are super loose with slurs and it doesn't make uncomfortable, just unhappy. Sorry for ranting (maybe incoherently at times) I just really like people. haha

 

It's interesting to me for the same reason, as a writer. I've never had a song lyric where I felt like profanity was necessary, however that's been a harder tightrope to walk in short stories. There have been plenty of times where I was writing dialogue and I thought, "I know my character would be cussing right here--but I don't want to write it! But I knooowwww he'd say it...But!" And so on, haha.

You've caught on to exactly why I prefer refraining though. Regardless of how you intend a word, you don't know how someone else might take it. What you mean as a joke could be taken as a derogatory slur by someone else.