I'm still on it.

[velvetpage]

My mid-20th-century music kick, that is. I think I've been on it since Christmas, more or less. It comes and goes.

The other day in my mom's pool, my stepdad and I were discussing the movie South Pacific, which we watched a while ago and really enjoyed. I tried, with very little success, to call into my head the waltz from that movie. I could see the female lead singing it. I could hear Julie Andrews' voice singing it (I have it on a CD with her.) I could pull up random lines from it (high as a flag on the fourth of July, if you'll excuse an expression I use, I'm in love. . .) But I could not for the life of me come up with the entire song.

This is unusual for me. Normally, I will come up with one lyric, and be able to simply pick up the song from there and keep going, singing it in a loop. The one line should have been enough to trigger the memory so I could sing the whole thing. But it wasn't, the the words didn't come.

So today I pulled out the aforementioned Julie Andrews CD and listened to it. Now I've got it running through my head in a medley of Richard Rodgers tunes, with the Carousel waltz providing background flavour.

I wonder when songwriters decided that good poetry wasn't necessary for a good song? The lyrics of these old tunes stick with me in a way modern lyrics very rarely do. Is it simply that, with fewer methods of recording and a smaller industry, only good stuff got produced? Is it that only the good stuff has survived for me to hear it, long after the composers are dead? Or are more people really writing awful stuff now than ever before?

I don't know, and I'd rather go back to listening to Julie Andrews than ponder it.

Elizabeth likes waltzing around the living room with Mommy, while Mommy sings, "I'm in love I'm in love I'm in love I'm in love, I'm in love with a wonderful guy!" at the top of her lungs. It's just a part of the fact that her Mommy is crazy and she loves it. :)

Comments

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Hey! Who is this guy?

[tormentedartist.livejournal.com]

Different strokes for different folks I guess. I think there is plenty of great music being put out today. Maybe it isn't being shoved in your face on MTV and Radio, but it's out there. You just have to find it I guess.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I know there probably is - I just haven't listened to the radio much lately, having been on a Cole Porter/Richard Rodgers/Gershwin kick for months on end. :)

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

I would differ with your basic premise: that music no longer has good poetry. Some of today's music, good rap in particular, has excellent lyrics. The poetry is a different style, certainly, but some of it is still very excellent poetry.

I think the difference is that the old poetry was simpler, and therefore catchier. The tunes were often simpler as well, easier to hum, easier to remember. The new poetry is complex. It deals with complex emotions, complex ideas, and especially with the good rap, complex rhyme patterns. It is less elegant, less catchy, but more...gritty, and often, I think, more moving.

I also think there is some of the 'crap getting produced because it's cheap to produce stuff' going on. There certainly is a whole lot of crap out there.

Maybe I should put together a compilation of songs that exemplify what I'm talking about, as far as good modern poetry goes. I'll put that on my to-do list.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Okay! I know there is good stuff out there - I just don't listen to the stations that play it.

[collie13.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see that list too, because I'm not sure I agree with your assessment. There are plenty of really good, complex songs from the time period Velvetpage is talking about -- have you ever tried replicating some of the harmonies the Andrews Sisters routinely belted out, for example? -and in South Pacific alone I know the song "You've Got to Be Taught" was considered so contentious at the time that they tried to force Hammerstein to pull it from the play.

My personal belief is that the songs may seem better to Velvetpage because only the good ones survived the test of time. For that matter, maybe these songs seem simple to some now because they're so familiar to us -- they're beaten into our brains through horrible Muzak versions which don't do justice to the originals.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the melodies of the old songs seem simple to us because they follow the basic patterns that we expect of Western music, and many of them follow the basic chord structures, too. Any half-decent pianist could sit down with a list of chords and a time signature for any of those songs and come up with an accompaniment.

Many modern songs seem to be built around one very narrow melody line. There's not much movement to them, making them much easier to sing, but also much more boring to listen to, if you happen to be interested in hearing something more complex.

As for harmony - there aren't very many modern songs where my sister and I can take different parts and sing something that sounds like a duet, while staying true to the format of the song. In short, there's very little real harmony. There are a few. If the Dixie Girls could be sung without twang, they'd have a good shot at the kind of harmony I'm talking about, but they lose out on lyrics - their song lyrics don't hold my attention. You're right about the Andrews sisters, and I'd rather listen to that kind of harmony any day than the bland stuff I hear on the radio.

I want something I can really sing to - something that requires me to use more than five notes of my range, something for which warming up would be a good idea. On top of that, I want memorable lyrics and harmonies that make me want to listen to it, even after I know the song well - that leave me something new to discover every time I listen.

I don't ask for much, do I?

[collie13.livejournal.com]

Hee! Only quality, and never stop asking for that, I say! ;)

Oh, my... do you and your sister sing harmony still? I used to with mine all the time as a child -- we were a very "singy" family -- she was soprano and I was alto. Apparently she had perfect pitch, and I had a nice ear for impromptu harmony. I wish we'd done more of it! We don't sing together much nowadays, since she lives on a different continent.

I miss singing! I should join a local choir, I think -- that'd be a delight. ;)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Heather and I still sing together periodically. I have a better ear for harmony than she does, and she can hit the high notes more often than I can, so I usually do the alto part. There are some times and some songs where we could both do either, though - officially, I'm a mezzo-soprano, and she's a soprano. We both have good ears, and we blend very well together.

I miss singing, too. I enjoyed teaching music this year because I got to sing so much, and introduce my kids to many songs I've always loved.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

It's that only the good stuff survived. I've heard some of the more obscure musicals from that time, and lord do they ever suck.