Earlier or later writings better?

[GardenStateGirlie]

Originally Posted by amber

I think you're right. But I don't think we're questioning the intention of the lyric, but the actual words chosen to express it - they do not flow very well. At least, that's what i'm saying. I love EFO, to...

No no, i'm not saying you guys don't like it, i'm just trying to possibly provide a reason as to why she chose to use the words that she did

[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by ontheEdgeof17

What's so bad with those two songs? Say You Will's chorus is repeated too much, but the verse lyrics are pretty good. As with EFO, it's perfection, lyric-wise (except for "most of the time").

They both strike me as shallow, lyrically. The subject matter is not shallow but I do think most of the way it's presented is.

That being said, I still love both of those songs. Especially "Say You Will." I find it irresistable.

Hillary

[ontheEdgeof17]

Originally Posted by GardenStateGirlie

No no, i'm not saying you guys don't like it, i'm just trying to possibly provide a reason as to why she chose to use the words that she did

For me, she is saying that even though this other person is connected to him and "has him", she has him, too....most of the time. She may not be living with him or eating dinner with him, he is thinking of Stevie during those times. So, even though this man is physically with this other woman, he's not mentally.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by Merf

So you can honestly tell me that none of the songs she wrote for SYW (the ones that were from recently, not "Smile At You" & "Goodbye Baby" obviously) were just crap? I mean, yeah, they weren't her best, but I think they were the best she's written in a long time (especially "Thrown Down" & "Illume")

I wouldn't say they're crap because they're much better than some of her other newer material, but they aren't classics by any means. Say You Will is fluff and I can listen to it as fluff, but it's too cliched and bland. She sleepwalks through it. Everybody Finds Out is great and has a phenomenal vocal, but some of the lyrics are cringeworthy. "She gets on a midnioght plane, she's done it a thousand times" is stupefying. Illume has superb lyrics overall but the song itself is too monotone and it goes absolutely nowhere. Y'all know my opinion on Thrown Down, I can't stand it. I'm one of the few who likes Silver Girl just based on the portrait she paints in it.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by GardenStateGirlie

Oh please. Yes, I agree Stevie suffers from a certain level of self- consciousness but I think that goes with the territory. You look at her prior to the Street Angel album and then look at her now, you can tell she aproaches her endevors with a certain level of awareness. HOWEVER, to call her music ****TY and accuse her of DWELLING on a relationship that may or may not have been (depending on who I'm speaking to with this post) the greatest love she's ever had is completely and totally assinine. You're telling her to act like younger artists and I believe we've already had this discussion before in one way or another. SHE ISN'T 25 ANYMORE. She's lived her life and been through some tough times whereas many of these younger artists haven't and a lot don't even write their own songs. What's she supposed to do? Go out and find another addiction so she can write about it? As far as muse is concerned maybe in her mind, the relationship she had with Lindsey was more satisfying to her than any other relationship could possibly ever be and who the hell am I to knock her for that? JMO.

I'm telling her to act like younger artists? Quote me.

She does dwell on a relationship that's been over since the seventies. Thrown Down is proof of that. Some may enjoy it, as you do, but I find it repetitive and dull. Maybe he is her muse, but it doesn't make the current music up to snuff for some people.

[DeadliestPoison]

Originally Posted by dissention

Everybody Finds Out is great and has a phenomenal vocal, but some of the lyrics are cringeworthy. "She gets on a midnioght plane, she's done it a thousand times" is stupefying.

See, I like that line. It sort of reminds me of Casablanca, and I guess the song could fit in with the Casablanca image to an extent.

But I loooooove EFO, so maybe I'm biased. The vocal's phenomenal, the music's great, I think the lyrics are stellar - they're relatively straight-forward and everyone can figure out what it's dealing with (a woman torn between two men). Whereas with Sara, my most hated song ever , the lyrics are ~*shrouded in mystery*~ and the music's all fluffy and light and her voice is so ~~soft~ delicate~ magyckal~~ that I just can't stand it. And it goes on F O R E V E R.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by GateandGarden

I was hoping you'd go into a long-ass explanation instead of simply saying, "Earlier because her newer music is crap."

One thing I really don't get is how you say her music is not as universal now. Who can't relate to "Say You Will" and "Love Is"? But who feels they can really relate to "Sisters of the Moon" or "Bella Donna"? I imagine some listeners are too busy trying to figure out what the hell she's talking about in the last two I mentioned. But that is why I really like her earlier writings, because they are wonderfully vague and I come up with my own interpretations. They mean whatever I want them to mean. (Is this starting to sound like one of her lame Q&A answers? ) I am tempted to say that her earlier lyrics have more depth, but do I just have it in my head that ambiguity and inimitability automatically equals depth? I'm not sure. I know that her earlier writings generally mean more to me because "Outside the Rain" can be about a number of things, some of which I have experienced, whereas "Everybody Finds Out" can really only be about a guy and a chick who are having an affair and the chick is angry with the other chick the guy's with. (I suppose EFO does fall into that category you mentioned diss, since it is one that doesn't have that universal appeal).

Now, it seems presumptuous to me to say that she needs to lose the Lindsey obsession. Do you really know that all those SYW songs are about him? I don't know; maybe it's common knowledge that they are and I'm just fooling myself in saying that they might be about someone else. But it pains me to think that EFO could be about Lindsey. How hurtful would that be to Lindsey and Kristin and eventually, their children? It's hard for me to fathom Stevie being so thoughtless and self-absorbed. I don't know; maybe it's all part of the game, just like how they insist on being affectionate on stage because, as Stevie has put it in articles, that's what people come to the concerts to see. I find that disturbing as well.

And I thought she wrote "Trouble in Shangri-La" twenty years ago? I thought it was an old demo. Am I wrong? Whatever the case, I agree that if she came out with more songs like that one, it would be beyond awesome. I'll take more of that over "Love Is," "I Miss You," and "Say You Will" any day. (I still don't think "Say You Will" is "junk," as you say, but then I'm not going to agree with a lot of what I see as your over-the-top negative language in that post).

Hillary

I gave a long ass explanation a few weeks ago:

http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showpo...&postcount=248

I think that the big reason I'm not a big fan of a lot of her later work is because, for me, something about her writing started to awry in the late eighties and the songs became much less relatable than they were before. I think she's at her best when there's a large sense of ambiguity to her songs. When she started to write songs like "Ghosts," "Two Kinds of Love," "That Made Me Stronger," "Sweet Girl," "Silver Girl," "Welcome to the Room Sara," and others along those lines, the songs became less universal and too personal in detail for me to enjoy very much. I know that I, personally, really have no desire to know how Stevie's depends on her music like a husband or how she talked to her famous friend last night. I don't know the woman, and never will, so it just strikes me as TMI and it begins to cloy. Others like that stuff and more power to them if they enjoy it, but I enjoy her work that doesn't explicitly refer to herself and her career and her dinners with friends about her songwriting. I can't get into them because I have a hard time relating. I like Silver Girl because it's quite vivid, but I don't enjoy it on the same level as something like Sable On Blonde because I'm not a girly-girl, I'm not lost in a hardcore world, and I don't have or look like a million bucks. It may just be me, but I listen to those songs and really don't give a fiddler's fig. Unfortunately, that's the turn her writing took and I don't enjoy it as much as I did before. I think she's a master at taking incredibly personal feelings and emotions and writing them into songs everyone can relate to, but I think she lost a bit of that over the years. Doesn't mean she can't be good when she wants to be because she can still knock her material out of the park, but I think it's come to point where for every fabulous song she records, she records a stinker to go along with it. Maybe she's run out of ideas or maybe I'm just a cold prick with no empathy or emotion, who knows. But those are the reasons I, personally, don't enjoy her new material that much.

As for the rest of your post:

1. Trouble In Shangri-La was written in 1995, which is amazing to me.
2. EFO is a good song, but it's another one of her "me songs." And those are the ones I absolutely despise, normally. Thankfully, she doesn't go as overboard as she does on songs like That Made Me Stronger, which makes it listenable.
3. No one knows if all the SYW are about Lindsey, half the time I think that the two of them are just bull**** artists who continue to create the "drama" and "romance" to sell albums and make cash (that's certainly their onstage schtick). But the fact that she still writes songs (Thrown Down) about this particular guy after their relationship ended almost 30 years ago is just odd to me. If she wants to do so that's fine, but I've lost interest in those particular songs for the most part.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by DrummerDeanna

It's ALL debatable - but it'd be a silly debate as this stuff is all relative....someone's favorite Stevie stuff is someone elses worst Stevie stuff etc....

Exactly.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by ontheEdgeof17

What's so bad with those two songs? Say You Will's chorus is repeated too much, but the verse lyrics are pretty good. As with EFO, it's perfection, lyric-wise (except for "most of the time").

I can't get over the unfinished train of thought in the first verse of SYW. It drives me mad.

[amber]

Originally Posted by dissention

Exactly.

yep - for instance, I don't care much for Bella Donna with some notable exceptions, of course.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by amber

yep - for instance, I don't care much for Bella Donna with some notable exceptions, of course.

I like it, minus Think About It, some of the title track (rather cloying), The Highwayman, and After the Glitter Fades. Not my favorite by any means, though.

[GardenStateGirlie]

Originally Posted by dissention

I'm telling her to act like younger artists? Quote me.

She does dwell on a relationship that's been over since the seventies. Thrown Down is proof of that. Some may enjoy it, as you do, but I find it repetitive and dull. Maybe he is her muse, but it doesn't make the current music up to snuff for some people.

To me, you're insinuating that she's not experiencing life like other musical artists are who perhaps haven't been around as long she. Just remember (oh wait, you never fail to remind us) Stevie's a lot older than many artists and she's been through many experiences in her life that a lot of these other people perhaps never went through. Not to mention, she's a different type of writer and her calling card has always been romanticism. Like I said, writers write about what they know, what they experience. What else does she have left to pull from? SHE'S WRITTEN IT ALL because she's experienced most topics covered in lyric form in some way or another. How many "new" experiences could she possibly have that wouldn't garner the same results? This is who she is and she's been this way for 30 years. She's not going to change. I don't want her to.

Thrown Down is hardly proof that she's dwelling on the past. "He fell for her again, she watched it happen." I don't need to belong to some "special club" to figure out what she's talking about. It couldn't be any more black and white unless she used names.

Call it repetitive and dull but don't refer to it as "****ty."

[dissention]

Originally Posted by GardenStateGirlie

Call it repetitive and dull but don't refer to it as "****ty."

I'll call it whatever I please, that's why it's my opinion and not yours.

[amber]

Originally Posted by dissention

I like it, minus Think About It, some of the title track (rather cloying), The Highwayman, and After the Glitter Fades. Not my favorite by any means, though.

rather cloying? sheesh. Although i do like a bit of the vocal. When she goes.."Belladonna" in that low, sexy way.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by amber

rather cloying? sheesh. Although i do like a bit of the vocal. When she goes.."Belladonna" in that low, sexy way.

Well, the pony and phoney line is beyond words because it's so bad, but I like when it gets very low and then kicks back up towards the end. Love that part.