Two songs

Decades ago I was told that rock lyrics don’t have to make sense as long as they fit the vein-splitting beat comfortably.  And yes, I wonder many of the millions listening to Elvis Presley’s  Jailhouse Rock (1956) realized that it was actually a short story set to music.  How many of the millions realized that the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction (1966) was a criticism of advertising?  These are lyrics that make sense.  Here are some thoughts on the lyrics of two songs where the lyrics don’t yield to easy (or any!) analysis. 

I am a walrus on the Magical Mystery Tour album (1967) by the Beatles has probably puzzled many who have attempted to find meaning in the words.  I quote the notes that accompanied the lyrics.

“John Lennon wrote the lyrics for this song as a consequence of receiving a letter from a pupil of Quarry Bank High School (Lennon’s old school) where it was said that a teacher had tried to analyse The Beatles’ lyrics in class. Lennon felt it was funny and decided to write a song that would be very hard to analyse.”

A technique in songs like this is the combination of the strange, even surreal, with the ordinary everyday events:  Sitting on a cornflake waiting for the bus to come.  Also from the notes on the song:  “The walrus was inspired by the poem “The Walrus and The Carpenter” by Lewis Carroll from his book “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” (1871).

The Rolling Stones’ song Walkin’ the dog is a 12-bar blues lyric written by Rufus Thomas (1962) also mixing the extra-ordinary with the ordinary:  I asked her mother for 15 cents / to see the elephant jump the fence / jumped so high, touched the sky, didn’t get back ‘till quarter to five.  One critic commented on the fact that not hearing all of a lyric in the white-hot delivery and even listening to a line that defies the world as we know it doesn’t matter to listeners  –  the words just need to sit well in that rhythm.  The critic described the phenomenon as “the unspeakable mix”. 

Interesting then, to contrast what I like to call the age of the lyric – the 1930s –  with what happened from the 1950s onward. 

©  Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Bridgewater, Somerset West

July, 2023

Sources

Wikipedia and AZlyrics

My drawings and graphic