drunkSince I am on one of my drunken tangents, as usual, I started listening to songs. And I rediscovered The KLF - 3AM Eternal. I fucking loved that song. When I got my first phone with an MP3 ringtone I made it my ringtone, mainly because when I thought to myself what the best possible ringtone of all time could be, it was that insanely heavy reverb, insanely simple arena house breakdown: "BEEP BOOP .. BOOP BEEP .. BUUP BOOP BUUP .. BOOP BEEP BOOP .. KAYYY-LEFFF! UH-HUH UH-HUH!" I even made a personal edit to prolong the suspense before KLF IS GONNA ROCK YA!!! And, because ringtones became passé about 6 months after they became hip, I put forward that it was the best ringtone of all time. Of. All. Time.
But, you know, Jesus Christ the song an sich is' für Scheiß. Seriously, the lyrics are awful. All the more evidence that I never listened to lyrics when I was a kid, and probably never will give a shit about lyrics. The only thing I remembered was that BEEP BOOP breakdown. I didn't even remember that this song had a craptastic 90s-ass rap in it. The breakdown was the only thing that mattered. Jumping 'cross the Atlantic to my new citizenship, I had fond memories of Snow's Informer - the largely unintelligible but utterly awesome dancehall triplets - till I went back as an adult and noticed the awful rap solo. Rhythm and melody is everything. That's the heart of the song. That's what sticks.
It's these times, when I think back to songs that made a huge impact in my youth and I realize as an adult that as a kid I just ignored the parts that sucked. Nine Inch Nails and Guns'n'Roses are great examples of that. Probably the only two guitar bands of my youth that I still enjoy as an adult, but both of them I can't listen to the lyrics any more or I will bash myself in the head with their stupidity. Fuck that noize, I'd rather listen to some guy talking about the ancients of mu-mu or how it's serious as cancer that rhythm is a dancer. Or, more to the point, I'd rather hear some goddamn synthesizers playing legendary riffs. Occasionally a guitar.
But, for real. Lyrics are a bane upon the purity of the sweet, sexy, perfect sound of synthesizers, dirty samplers and effected-out-the-ass guitars. God knows I love a handful of singers (Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Young, Marc Almond, Suzanne Vega, and um... that's a handful), but holy hell. If you aren't going to make your whole song poetry, then just don't even try. All these hundreds of thousands of singers and rappers who can't string a word together to save their lives can go fuck off with all that nonsense. Who I care about is their guitarist, their synth guy, their producer. Oh wait, there's a dub? Shut your fucking mouth while I listen to the song the way it was meant to be heard.
I remember melodies, not lyrics.
Synthesizers are everything.
