The Challenge of "Culture"

[innerSpaceman]

I find the thread in this thread about lyrics to be most interesting. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I think lyrics are vitally important. I hate when I can't understand what the singer is "saying." While it's true that so much is told musically, it's also true that if a song has lyrics - - most of its communication is through language.

I always look up lyrics when I can't understand them from being sung. I must know what is being told by the human voice. And while I can appreciate foreign language vocals for the musicality of voice, I feel like I am missing something dreadfully important when I can't understand the language. (Which is why I prefer the case of Cirque du Soleil, which features a made-up language that truly relies only on vocal musicality to communicate).


Interestingly, lyrics are one of the amazing things about human memory. Most people can remember most lyrics to most songs for absofreakinglutely ever. The brain pathways to musical lyrics are the most reliable memory pathways in the human mind. We remember song lyrics we unconsciously learned 20 years ago, but remember little else from 20 years ago. We may not remember what we did last weekend, but we will recall lyrics of a song we heard on the radio 238 weekends ago.