The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock
“...why, after nearly forty years—and despite its acknowledged musical dominance—is rock 'n' roll still an outcasts' medium and a pariah at the gate of high culture?”
—Henry Sullivan
The first time I heard Muse was two days after my arrival in the UK . I sat alone and fidgety in the sitting room of a strange house where I had just rented a place to sleep. In desperation, to fill the quiet, I fiddled with the stereo until I succeeded in getting the radio to come on. After carefully tuning out bits of static, I sat down again with my journal and a blanket. The radio sloshed around in the background while I held my pen and watched it scribble around on the page. None of the music played was familiar. I listened absentmindedly, until I heard—
“I won't let you bury it,
I won't let you smother it,
I won't let you murder it...”
The dark refrain caught my attention. I looked up from my journal, shifting my concentration to the song. It was intense and almost despairing, loud but not offensive; its insinuations were both forceful and smooth. For some reason, possibly having to do with my having just flown thousands of miles to end up alone in a strange country, I found myself enthralled by the sound of the music and its poetry. Their expression of such a paradoxically hopeless assertion of authority spoke to me without my knowing exactly how. I remember later typing remembered fragments of the lyrics into Google and discovering that the band were called Muse and the song “Time is Running Out.” During the following months the radio in my flat stayed perpetually on and I listened, waited, and hoped to hear more of their music. Before I left England, I spent £9.99 at Virgin Megastores on Muse's latest album, Absolution.
It is safe to say that no mere poem, however beautiful or well-written, has made that much of an impression on me, nor moved me to spend nearly ten quid. Yet upon opening the blue-grey CD cover of Absolution all I see are poems: lines of text trailing away, spaced out among dark, smudgy graphics. Put down on paper, all lyrics and no chords, a song stripped of its melody is nothing more than a poem. David Pichaske, in his article “Poetry, Pedagogy, and Popular Music: Renegade Reflections,” asserts, “Rock songs do virtually everything that traditional, or 'linear,' poetry does—with the possible exception of making a shape on the page. ...rock explores aspects of language as sound, including pitch, tempo, volume, cadence, rising and falling intonation” (5). In the case of Muse and many other artists, rock songs are capable of accomplishing all these things in addition to making unique shapes on the page. CD covers with printed lyrics are just another way rock bands produce the overall effect of their expression.
In many ways, rock explores far more than the aspects of language as sound. Rock is characterized primarily by the musical distinctions of its incessant beat and raging guitar chords, but also often ascribes and contributes to its own brand of image, attitude, performance, narrative, and social commentary. But despite being such a diversely influential and popular medium, rock music captures only a limited degree of serious academic attention. Why is this the case? Original rock lyrics can be as intellectually stimulating as any plain printed media. Not only are the lyrics important in and of themselves, stripped of the drums, guitars, and screaming vocals, but also because of what those very accompanying aspects add to the plain words.
Though an undeniably influential part of modern culture, somehow rock music resists being listed among more scholarly forms of artistic expression. In the article “Literary Dialogues: Rock and Victorian Poetry,” Karen Alkalay Gut writes, “The first impediment to the perception of rock in terms of a literary genre is its spokesmen’s insistence upon their own profound alienation from literature and their general disdain of literary pursuits” (34). The separation seems clear-cut, unsurprising, and unbridgeable. The casualness of rock music, its unsophisticated attitude, the way rock subscribes to no rules—almost everything about rock seems antithetical to all attempts at serious interpretation. Perhaps it is that rock music has come to mean something by accident. Inadvertently, rock music might have developed an almost sophisticated rhetorical artistry alongside its emotional expression, its spirit of rebellion, and its “vague, raw hunger,” as Alkalay Gut puts it (58).
If any important meaning can be found in the genre of rock music, it must be found in the written half, the lyrics. Without words, a piece of music may be pleasant and enjoyable, but it remains uninterpretable. Little specific meaning can be taken from a set of pure instrumentals. Lyrics, shaped by the music behind them, give to a song meaning more accessible than any that may be contained in pure, unmediated musical notes. However, the lyrics cannot be isolated from their accompaniment; to attempt such a thing would be to deny this type of poetry its unique form. Emphasizing this fact, Jonas Fornas, the author of “The Words of Music” states, “Song is a hybrid form that combines and is, therefore, simultaneously words and music” (5). It is when words are blended with melody that the magic of song happens. Fornas goes on to say, “One may disregard or actively listen for the words, feel how they combine with the music, but it is hard not to hear them as something other and more than pure musical sound” (1). It is in lyrical content that the most academically significant dimension of rock music can be seen.
Interpreting, or even paying attention to, the lyrics of rock music is something not everyone cares to do, but that does not negate the value of applying critical thinking to popular music. Though a song's lyrics are not necessarily what make it popular, they are what make it interesting and meaningful. Drums and guitar solos provoke no specific or explainable train of thought, whereas the words of a song tell stories, express ideas, and give the listener a real connection to the songwriter and his or her opinions. Once there is that connection, further meaning becomes available for discovery. Fornas writes, “It is through hearing sounds, rather than making them, that their meanings are produced.... Reception is more essential here than material production” (2). Therefore, meaning is created in the mind of the listener. The reasons anyone sees any meaning at all in a song are only partially due to the intents of the lyricist. Each individual comes with his own perspective in which meaning appears differently. The work of interpretation is done in the listener's mind, via his thoughts, memories, and imagination. Interpretive possibility gives a song multidimensional life. The participation involved in bringing meaning to a song is part of the connection necessary for a song to fulfill its communicative purpose.
In spite of the multitudes of cliché and manufactured music in the world, many thought-provoking songs exist and find a voice loud enough to be heard. Within the four-album discography of Muse are several songs which through their originality evoke a strong sense of meaning or purpose without forcing any single explicit message. Like poetry, the imagery of such songs is not specific, but still evocative; not particularly necessary, but beautiful in the way that art must be beautiful for it to be of any worth. An example of this can be found in the song “Plug In Baby,” from the album Origin of Symmetry. Nowhere in the song are video games mentioned by name, but nonetheless within the lyrics I can see a heartbroken teenage boy trying to numb the pain of betrayal in virtual murder, blood, suicide and endless second chances. The lyrics of the chorus invoke a “plug in baby” who “crucifies my enemies... in unbroken virgin realities.” The second verse goes on, taking on a sad taunting tone, “Baby you're gonna lose/ Your own game/ Change me/ And replace the envying/ To forget your love” (www.muse.mu). From what I know about boys and how obsessed they seem to be with video games, it seems the perfect interpretation. There are, of course, other possibilities, including drugs, rape, or pornography. The complexity of the message makes it worth thinking about, and what's more, worth talking about.
Several of Muse's songs, as well as the song of various other artists, have the power to inspire discussion if only people would pay attention to them. The songs that make up Absolution are open to various interpretations, but are also centered on a theme; the lyrics are not so open or random that they become abstract. What anyone else sees in the songs may be different from what I see; that is the beauty of interpretation. The biography on the official Muse website quotes Matthew Bellamy, the main lyricist for the band:
“The songs are always a reflection of what we’re feeling personally and what’s happening around us. We didn’t do a concept album as such, but a theme did develop, built around a sense of things coming to an end. ....It’s how you deal with those changes that is at the core of these songs.” (www.filtermmm.com/muse)
This is a general idea of what the songs on Absolution mean for those who wrote them. For me or for anyone else, the lyrics might evoke different ideas and emotions. It is not because the lyrics of these songs may contain any specific details about how to make life better, or hold the answers to the most important questions in the world, but because they make me think that I enjoy them so much. Significance is something we as human beings cannot escape trying to find and share, whether it be in expressing ourselves or in interpreting the expressions of others.
However, though we seek for answers, to determine definitively the meaning of a piece of art is not the reason we subject it to analysis. Art exists primarily for its own sake, and any meaning within it must be secondary. Why should rock music be viewed any differently from any of the other artforms we spend time analyzing in English classes? Pichaske explains his thoughts on what good might come of critiquing rock music: “…the language and techniques of traditional literary analysis would illuminate the dominant American culture and thus help everyone better understand who and what we are” (4). Because rock makes up and influences such large portions of our society, treating rock with more academic attention will make useful contributions to our cultural understanding.
As performance art, rock music has many purposes. Rock is loud. Rock is angry. Rock is intense. How that wildness deters so many from viewing rock music as an academically, philosophically, and culturally important genre is understandable, but to discount popular music's significance merely because that genre is popular and entertaining rather than sober and 'traditional' is narrow-minded. If it is possible to find meaning in a poem written centuries ago, a novel written last year, or a play first staged far away in a different time or place, it ought to be just as possible to interpret the lyrics of rock music with the same degree of seriousness. Indeed, if the ceaseless quest for significance is part of what makes us human, every opportunity to make meaning from the creative expressions around us ought to be taken.
WORKS CITED
Alkalay Gut, Karen. “Literary Dialogues: Rock and Victorian Poetry.” Poetics Today 21.1, 2000. 33-60
Fornas, Jonas. “The Words of Music.” Popular Music and Society. February 2003.
Muse. Absolution. Taste Media. 2003
Official Muse Website . 2004. <http://www.filtermmm.com/muse/>
Pichaske, David R. “Poetry, Pedagogy, and Popular Music: Renegade Reflections.” Popular Music and Society Winter 1999.
Sullivan, Henry W. The Beatles With Lacan: Rock & Roll as Requiem for the Modern Age New York : Peter Lang. 1995.
