Lyrics and Noise

I've long been an advocate of the literariness of a song, that the lyrics and music should match but also that the lyrics should be very well written. While this is a topic of possibly endless debate, where I do find myself arguing with various of my own points, I do champion the importance of good lyricism, of good songwriting. So it's always interesting to find a jumble of words that, when written on the page, don't really make much sense, but fit perfectly with the music that they go with.

Case in point here is The Verve's carrier single from their new album, Forth, entitled "Love is Noise." While Richard Ashcroft has been hailed as one of the great songwriters (by Chris Martin, not sure by how many other people) he has a tendency to try to be metaphysical without really having a point. This isn't to say that I don't like the man's songs, far from it. The Verve are probably one of my favorite bands, if not my favorite from 90s britpop. Ashcroft has the gift for pretty lines, and also for finding a good line and repeating it in variations that give meaning when coupled with The Verve's music, particularly that airy guitar sound and the general feeling that you're someplace else when you're listening to them. And thus we have these lines from "Love is Noise" :

Will those feet in modern times
Walk on soles made in China?
Will those feet in modern times
See the bright prosaic malls?
Will those feet in modern times
Recognise the heavy burden
Will those feet in modern times
Pardon me for my sins
Love is noise
Come on

One might think that the song might be going somewhere. The rest of the lyrics are some variation on those in the lines listed above. And so, in trying to make sense of them, in any kind of literary way, one is left saying, "Huh?" And still, when you hear that chorus, "Love is noise/Love is Pain/ Love is these blues I'm singing again/" with that irresistible vocal hook and propulsive guitars, you can't help but be drawn by it, the head bopping to the dance/trance beat.

I've been trying to look for other examples. I think a good one is U2's "Bad". It sounds beautiful, the lush, warm melody that develops and really makes you swoon. Giving that song its rise is Bono's powerful delivery of some lines like:

If I could throw this
Lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay
See you walk, walk away
Into the night
And through the rain
Into the half-light
And through the flame

When Bono sings them one line at a time, these lines seem so powerful, so rich in meaning. And yet when we look at it on the page it doesn't really aspire to a level anywhere near poetry. And still it fits perfectly within the context of the song.

This then begs the question, how can I accept and love these songs, and yet despise "Umbrella" or anything by Soulja Boy and mock the undying absurdity of Akon? Is it the purpose? Is it in the expression? When I hear the song that goes "It's too late to apologize" it seems that it's just such a bare and unbearable outpour of emotion, unmitigated by any artistic sense, much like "I-e-I-I will always love you-hu-hu-hu". And still these songs do, in some way, adhere to the principles of music composition. So how then do we define, do we judge? On what are we to base our aesthetics?

Lyricism seems still crucial in terms of whether I like a song or not. I suppose that this calls for a constant repositioning in the demand that we make of a song. But how is it acceptable for me to like "Love is Noise" when, for much the same reasons people will cite other songs and say, "E gusto ko yung beat" even if they don't know what the songs mean? I could appeal to The Verve's shamanistic tendencies where they invoke a kind of trance with their music and have these weird lines floating above it all. Then that brings along more problems and questions of the demand which we make of music. That would then say, so as long as you're making this kind of music you have a right to write drivel?

How do we define drivel and nonsense verse from plain nonsense? What makes "Come Together" or "I am the Walrus," both of those songs playing on sound-driven (and I'm inclined to believe acid-driven) verse, different or superior to contemporary pop music, much of the lyrics of which are nonsensical? I'm still trying to find an answer to this.