Could SAY YOU WILL be IT????

[sara1998]

Originally posted by seteca
it's always nice to have a good debate. My post was not in any way intended to mean "Lindsey can get away with writing simple lyrics and Stevie can't."


Therefore, perhaps you wrote that just to annoy CarneVaca knowing that he is a Lindsey fan,

Yes, I agree a good debate is always welcome, and I know you weren't intending to be mean. I didn't take it as such, you had a wonderful point.


And, yes, it was for annoyance...

Maria

[Johnny Stew]

Originally posted by seteca
My post was not in any way intended to mean "Lindsey can get away with writing simple lyrics and Stevie can't"

Not in regards to you, but from everything I've observed, the thing some people take issue with, is that there *does* seem to be a double-standard.

It sometimes appears that the two writers are held up to a different set of standards, and that one will be lauded and praised for writing a certain way... while the other is criticized for it, and their talents are called into question.

I think that's what the whole argument boils down to....
Why is it considered brilliant when one does it, and why is it considered garbage when the other does it?
Without a doubt, it comes off as hypocritical to people... and when folks feel as passionately about something, as the fans on these boards clearly do, they're bound to take exception to that mindset.

To me, the answer to the question is very clear... it's all about what speaks to the individual.

I'll quite readily admit that there are lyrics that reach me, and lyrics that don't... but I'd never seriously question their value, because I know that they probably mean something to *someone.*
(Well, ok, you got me... I do question the value of rap... but I'm trying to find an appreciation for it.)

There's nothing wrong with not liking a song, and saying so... but we should be open enough to the idea that somebody else does, whether we can understand why or not.

Maybe if all sides would respect the fact that each of these songs has value and merit... no matter how we may feel about them... then perhaps we can come to some sort of detente around here.

I probably shouldn't hold my breath... but I can still hope.



Johnny Stew

[Janet]

I think songs are about feelings really.

I can listen to one song and think it's great because of how it makes me feel and the next could hate it.

There is a Back Street Boys song that someone could feel is written so well and sung so well and someone else could hate it...

Kate Bush, Stevie Nicks...many women got slammed for their writing...and also praised. They are both really well loved but I think also hated for their mystical look on life and their sometime's off the wall writing. But again, its all feelings.

Lindsey is ALOT more basic and upfront where Stevie is a poet. You can't compare you can just have opinions and feelings..no two people think alike and WHO CAN SAY what is GOOD or BAD! No two people LIKE the same music or respect the same music..thats life.

[CarneVaca]

Every time I think I'm out... They pull me back in.

I can't help jumping back in here, though I was hoping I was done with this thread. Here's how I feel: If you write something for your own personal satisfaction, be it a poem, song, essay, novel or anything else, and you just plan to keep it for yourself, then the gratification you get from it should be enough. However, the minute you give it to the world by publishing it, you've essentially given it up. It no longer belongs only to you. So you have an obligation to your audience. So when someone says if Stevie doesn't want to write something clearly, she doesn't have to, I bristle a little.

If Stevie doesn't want to explain something when she writes something for herself only, that is her prerogative. But when she puts it out in public, she has an obligation to be the best she can. And here's my issue: I don't believe she has been the best she can be with most of these more recent lyrics. But does that matter? Certainly not to the thousands of fans who are still buying her music and perceive some meaning in the lyrics that they can apply to their own experience. Then there's those of us who simply find the lyrics uninspired. Can we express our dislike of her work without being atttacked? It seems that's impossible here.

And I'll make a point about the double standard that Johnny Stew mentions: There is no double standard. Lindsey fans became his fans not because of his lyrics but because of his musicianship and guitar chops. Stevie fans became fans of hers because of her lyrics, her voice and her looks. When the voice, looks and lyrics took a huge dive, her popularity waned. I am happy that she is popular again, but I wish she would write better.

Let's look at the reality of the situation today:

Stevie has recovered some of her voice but she can't sing like she once did. Her writing, and you're welcome to the disagree all you want, simply is not as good as it once was. And she remains an at-best marginal musician who plays the same chords on most of her songs.

Lindsey, on the other hand, is playing and singing better than ever. His voice still reaches unbelievable highs and does very cool lows. His production and musicianship are top notch. And his writing has improved vastly. I'll put up songs like Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind, Murrow, Peacekeeper, Down on Rodeo, Miranda and others against Stevie's Thrown Down, Candlebright, Say You Will, Sweet Girl and just about anything she's written in the last 15 years. If you think Thrown Down or Candlebright are more meaningful than Peacekeerp or Murrow, you most certainly have the right to think so. But I am going to continue to strongly disagree with you.

So where's the double standard? One has continued to improve and reached his apex of creativity while the other, though more popular, to paraphrase Lindsey, is a shadow of the artist she used to be.

And now, at the risk of becoming (??) a serious windbag, I will conclude this post by reiterating that tastes are beyond dispute.

[wondergirl9847]

Originally posted by CarneVaca
tastes are beyond dispute.

I think THAT is the understatement of the MILLENIUM!!

Whatever touches you, whatever makes you laugh or cry, YAY YOU!! That's what is so interesting about the human race, we all respond to various things differently...and it causes debates as well as bringing us together. Some people think that laughing during a funeral (for whatever reason) is SACRILEDGE while others may not be bothered, thinking that there must be some reason for the laughter, perhaps the masking of pain. That's just the way we are...I'm so glad we can discuss stuff and argue, debate, let off steam, whatever...because we NEED to.

Carne, I agree with you, Lindsey's voice is WAY strong and I love it more now than ever before...even tho I love his high voice from back in the day too! LOL

Not to be a jerk, but Stevie wrote Candlebright back in the 70's, right? The demo for that is called Nomad.

[tommer]

CarneVaca, it's not like your arguments are 'not allowed', it's just that at some point you just lost your credibility with some people here, everything stevie does is for you another reason to be displeased with her, some of what you say has some truth to it, but at this point you are like the boy who cried wolf.
you choose to see stevie nicks as someone who once was, against lindsey who's the master of all which is brilliant. this theory is very legit, but to me it's a theory which simply contradicts reality.
i could write essays about why to me stevie is far better than lindsey or why is she so much more popular than him, question his abilities, comparing them to her proven ones, wondering about his frustration as a great musician who always had to be shadowed by his ex-lover who dumped him... but i don't.
i actually tried it once and was kicked in the butt (deservingly), i was being tactless, there are nicer ways to put things than the ones you use.

[CarneVaca]

Tommer, I guess ultimately the issue is this: There's a new album about to be released. Lots of people are going to come to these boards to say what they don't like or like about the songs. I probably will do so as well. I am probably going to express opinions that people don't like. Some folks will always say, "It's not what you said, it's how you said it." Well, whatever. I have some problems with how certain opinions are expressed here too, but I don't go picking fights because of "how" they were expressed. So long as the person doesn't insult me, I don't care how they say it.

Frankly, I think every one should get off this artificial moral high ground of "how" something is said because as we have seen, it is often the people who complain the loudest about "how" that turn around and commit that very sin.

Enough on this. I'm getting bored with this thread now. Peace to all.

[Johnny Stew]

This isn't meant as a retort... it's just something I was thinking about.
Stevie has released around 100 self-penned songs in 30 years time (i'm not counting anything that was written by someone else, of course), and only about a half dozen of those, from then until now, can be legitimately deemed outright clunkers by just about everyone.
Anything more than that, is really just a matter of personal preference.

There are songwriters who have considerably less output, in roughly the same amount of years, yet have an equal amount of clunkers.
All in all, I think Stevie continues to have a pretty high success rate.



Johnny Stew

[Christopher]

Johnny-you bring up a very valid point that immediately called to mind when I was reading Carnes post, and I quote:
"I'll put up songs like Someone's Gotta Change Your Mind, Murrow, Peacekeeper, Down on Rodeo, Miranda and others against Stevie's Thrown Down, Candlebright, Say You Will, Sweet Girl and just about anything she's written in the last 15 years."

Lindsey hasn't released anything substantial in 10 years, and has had at least that amount of time to come up with this material, and never has he come close to being as prolific as Stevie -NOT saying that being prolific = better songwriting, But Stevie has amassed a much larger catalog open to more scrutiny, so of course shes bound to have more duds in there ....I can go on and on how uninspired and medicore lindsey's lyrics were to me from the beginning up until OOTC- and he was never breaking the mold using esoteric chord structures either, even Peacekeeper's chords are the usual fare.

BUT I strongly disagree with you Carne, I think Stevie HAS written some very above par material in the last 15 years-same chords or not. i.e. TWISTED - (some of her BEST lyrics); TROUBLE IN SHANGRI-LA - ( great poetic imagery-and fantastic song); PLANETS OF THE UNIVERSE- (even though the chorus was written years ago-she wrote the verses recently-and again great lyrics..."let there be light in this lifetime"......); FALL FROM GRACE!!!, LOVE CHANGES- ( ok this one may be more controversial -but I think its a solid melodic song and also foreshadows a more straightforward and articulate lyrical approach that Stevie seems to be embracing more and more). also BLUE DENIM & KICK IT! from Street Angel.

And let us not forget she had some of her best lyrics ever on
"The Other Side of the Mirror"-The production on it is certainly open for debate, but it was a solid effort lyrically and has some great songs that I can only imagine what they would have been under Lindseys influence.

[David]

Originally posted by Janet
Kate Bush, Stevie Nicks...many women got slammed for their writing...and also praised. They are both really well loved but I think also hated for their mystical look on life and their sometime's off the wall writing. But again, its all feelings.

I've always wanted to ask this: What do Stevie Nicks fans mean when they say she (or Kate Bush) is "mystical"?

Kate Bush is featured in next month's MOJO magazine. The writer says that she was asked to open for Fleetwood Mac in the late 1970s on the band's North American tour (not specified which year). Anybody ever hear this? I had no idea!

Lindsey is ALOT more basic and upfront where Stevie is a poet.

I don't understand. If your lyric is basic & upfront, you're not a poet?

For all of you pet-owners out there, I can't think of a more basic, upfront---& moving---poem than this:

The old dog barks backward without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.

This is Frost's "The Span of Life." Who dares to say that Robert Frost isn't a poet?

Stevie is no more intrinsically a poet than Lindsey is. She may be a better poet from time to time (or she may be a worse poet from time to time), but her stylistic reliance on gothic imagery & frenzied, vertiginous emotional states is no more "poetic" in principle than the brittleness & minimalism of Lindsey's lyrics. You're confusing poetic trappings with poetry itself. Stevie Nicks fans must think that all poetry must resemble stuff by Charlotte Bronte.

If you express your experience in any formal, stylized way, you're a poet! Vernon Young's impressionistic analysis of Riefenstahl's "Olympia" is poetry in addition to being a film review. Dickens' evocation of fog-choked London in the first two paragraphs of "Bleak House" is poetry in addition to being the opening of a novel. Poetry is as wide as the earth.

[wondergirl9847]

Art.

Now, what just now popped into your head as you all read that word? We ALL have a different idea of art. Some people think Picassos' paintings are MASTERPIECES, others look at it and say "My five year old could paint better than that crap!" Same goes for poetry...I can read some poems and be touched, others I read and go "What kind of crap is this?"

ANYONE who writes lyrics/poetry is a poet...even Avril Lavigne with the song Complicated. I believe all songs are poems with a melody. Whether you write airy-fairy music or straight, in-your-face music, it's all poetry, because it comes from a person's heart and soul...IMO.

Stevie is known as being mystical because of her "witchy" persona, but also because of her airy-fairy lyrics (NO OFFENSE, I LOVE HER AIRY-FAIRY LYRICS!!!), I can't describe them any other way...they have a mideival quality to them sometimes. Bob Welch and Danny Kirwan have a mystical quality to their music too...and I love them for it! Lindsey has had mystical moments..."That's All For Everyone", "Make Me a Mask", "You and I, Part I", etc...it's that weird, etheral feel to the music.

[CarneVaca]

Christopher, I think David hit the nail on the head. As he usually does.

Let me add this: I will put up Go Your Own Way, I'm So Afraid, Save Me a Place and Can't Go Back against anything Stevie wrote in that same time period. And I realize Can't Go Back and Save Me a Place probably have no more than 50 words piece. But that is the magic, isn't it?

And now, I'm out. I mean it!

[Johnny Stew]

"Save Me A Place" and "Can't Go Back," against the likes of "Storms" and "Gypsy"?
I think even Lindsey might wanna sit that one out!


(Just so there's no confusion... I'm only being funny.)



Johnny Stew

[BombaySapphire3]

Johnny you Left out 'Edge of 17." Sara' and "Beautiful Child'

[CarneVaca]

Originally posted by Johnny Stew
"Save Me A Place" and "Can't Go Back," against the likes of "Storms" and "Gypsy"?
I think even Lindsey might wanna sit that one out!


(Just so there's no confusion... I'm only being funny.)

You're right, Johnny, that is funny.