In my own experience song lyrics divorced from their music may or may
not seem embarrassingly naked, depending, interestingly, on what sort
of songs are involved.
Most rock and popular song lyrics, even good ones, sound quite stilted
when experienced as a written text. It's hard to tell whether this is
true of something like Farewell Angelina, since most of us can't read
it without playing it to the tune in our heads. I suspect it wouldn't
sound as good to someone who had never heard it sung. (There was a
hilarious routine relevant to this in Annie Hall, when one of Woody
Allen's horrible dates talks about how great Bob Dylan is: "... and I
really like the one where he says um ... she takes just like a woman,
yes, she does ... and um ... she makes love just like a woman, yes,
she does ...")
Traditional ballads (like the Child ones) come across fairly well on
the page, though finally hearing one familiar to you only through the
text sung can be a revelation.
Elizabethan lyrics have the best of both worlds: wonderful on the
page and even better when sung. Campion's lyrics are great poetry,
but some of them become unbearably beautiful when sung. A good
performance of his "Never weather beaten sail" is almost enough to
make me get religion, which is saying something. I read somewhere
that this hymn was still sung in Anglican parishes well into the
twentieth century. Say what you will about the C of E, they certainly
have the best language of any denomination I know.
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Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
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