'tis the anniversary.
RIP Ritchie, Buddy and BB.
Waddya reckon - should Don MacLean be afforded the highest wordie status for his song's lyrics? Or was it just a ramble loosely cobbled together in an overpowering fit of self indulgence?
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_398b.html for them that's interested.
stales
an aside; on another page we find this subhead:
Fighting Ignorance Since 1973
(It's taking longer than we thought)
Neat link, stales, in that includes words from the man himself (these come after he indicates he has not and will not give answers): songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence. --Don McLean, Castine, Maine
Now, I happen to really like this song, and Vincent too (hi, lusy!) which in these two cases mean I also like and have some respect for Don McLean. So I will say that possibly some of his terms are actual references; but I agree with Mr. Adams that the most likely truth for some of them is that they rhyme.
For many other songwriters, and I have to say for artists (painters) too, my personal opinion is that quite often there isn't any "deep" [significant look e] meaning. They just put a bunch of words down that sound good together, because they sound good together. Period. Speaking of periods--I agree with the character Charlene from the old show Designing Women, when she was talking about how supposedly-sophisticated art critics come up with hidden meanings in a painting that consists of a big red dot. She says, "Come on--it's just a big ol' red dot!"
tsuwm, I couldn't find your page, but I did find this:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_065.htmlI thought we had discussed this topic before, but a search on pompatus gave no results, and I didn't remember the explanation given in this link, anyway.
Or, as the English professor said to Isaac Asimov, "Just because you wrote it what makes you think you have any idea what it's about?"
which leads us directly to the "deconstructionists".
Bad news on the doorSTEP
I couldn't take one more STEP
Er, genius?
Sorry, that couplet always bugged the heck out of me!
I know what you mean. But digging a bit deeper, although the word appears and sounds the same, the referent is different: in one case it's a physical construction
12. a. A flat-topped structure, normally made of stone or wood and some six or seven inches high, used, singly or as one of a series, to facilitate a person's movement from one level to another
and in the other it's a human pace:
1. a. An act of bodily motion consisting in raising the foot from the ground and bringing it down again in a fresh position; usually, an act of this kind as constituting by repetition the progressive motion... (OED2)
It could also suggest a dance step, in the context of the music dying.
In addition there is also the internal rhyme of door/more... which even Jackie would prolly make rhyme!! eg
but hey, if it doesn't work for you, there are plenty of songs to go round :)
> there are plenty of songs to go round :)
Really? I thought the song remains the same.
I thunk he were referring to the odd, hiccuppy sort of rhythm:
on the DOOR step
take one more STEP
is how it should go, but you get that
take one MORE step
plus the more is jammed up against the step a little too hard. They do it to fit the rhythm of doorstep, but.
take one more STEP
is how it should go, but you get that
take one MORE step [e.a.]
How so? For me that simply reinforced the meaning that there have been a lot of steps taken already but.
simply reinforced the meaning
I've rolled them both around on my tongue and I don't hear the McLean rhythm as being natural for the emphasis you're suggesting. I get that meaning just from the syntax of the whole statement. I stand by my analysis. Not that it's bothered me as much as it seems to bother Only Doug. Just another tick on the old why-do-they-provoke-such-visceral-reactions life list.
why-do-they
I heard once that fanaticism is the surest sign of doubt...
the surest sign of doubt
So, cygne, get to Boston much? Know how to tell who made eye contact?
Just another tick on the old why-do-they-provoke-such-visceral-reactions life list.Speaking of "but", "door step" goes up and in, "more step" comes down and out...
...talk to me...
*********
Only Doug?
It sounds like such a Lonely Doug!
For many other songwriters, and I have to say for artists (painters) too, my personal opinion is that quite often there isn't any "deep" [significant look e] meaning. They just put a bunch of words down that sound good together, because they sound good together.
Jackie, I have to emphatically disagree. As a songwriter the words are far too important to the telling of a story just be be some abstract collage thrown together, that's absurd. A good song always tells a story, especially in folk music, but even if it's a pop love song.
From Woody Guthrie, Bill Monroe, and Hank Williams, to George and Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter, to Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and Joni Mitchell, et al...folk, rock, show, bluegrass, opera, country...the words *are important. There are some strange pieces that seem to make sense to the *writer (see MacArthur Park), but whose failure of imagery render them a *seeming abstraction, but no one writes lyrics without some purposeful cohesion to the words...that's what makes it a song. Even Frank Zappa's avant-garde, "abstract" lyrics were chosen to create a cohesive motion in subtext to the music.
Yes, there were the Surrealists among the poets like Rimbaud who wrote in abstract imagery...but that was a certain "school," a "movement" in writing. But to say that a songwriter 'just puts a bunch of words down together because they sound good together' just isn't true. That's not a matter of opinion, that's just not what songwriting is all about. Certain songs may sound that way to you, but those are few and in-between. The majority of songwriters care about their words very deeply, it's their poety, their literature.
who made eye contact
I see what you're sayin'...
First, I didn't say "all", I said "many". Second, I said it was my personal opinion. Third and most importantly, I certainly didn't mean that songs are written with no coherence whatsoever, like the quotes in the fool-the-spam-filter thread. Fourth, I said "deep meaning". Q.E.D.:
YUMMY YUMMY
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.
I got love in my tummy,
And I feel like a-lovin you:
Love, you're such a sweet thing,
Good enough to eat thing
And that's just a-what I'm gonna do.
Ooh love, to hold ya,
Ooh love, to kiss ya,
Ooh love, I love it so.
Ooh love, you're sweeter,
Sweeter than sugar.
Ooh love, I wont let you go.
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,
I got love in my tummy,
And as silly as it may seem;
The lovin' that you re giving,
is what keeps me livin'
And your love is like
Peaches and cream.
Kind-a like sugar,
Kind-a like spices,
Kind-a like, like what you do.
Kind-a sounds funny.
But love,honey
Honey. I love you.
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,
I. got love in my tummy,
That your love can satisfy;
Love, you're such a sweet thing,
Good enough to eat thing
And sweet thing, that ain't no lie.
I love to hold ya,
Oh love, to kiss ya,
Ooh love, I love it so.
Ooh love, you're sweeter,
Sweeter than sugar.
Ooh love, I wont let you go.
Well said Jackie.
Also, I'm pretty certain I heard somewhere (YCLIU?) that Toto claim their song 'Africa' was written purely for sound - lyrics being chucked in and so on, with no attempt at profundity. America have apparently claimed the same for 'A horse with no name'.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
>that Toto claim their song 'Africa' was written purely for sound - lyrics being chucked in and so on, with no attempt at profundity.
And let's (not) forget Duran Duran.
First, I didn't say "all", I said "many". Second, I said it was my personal opinion. Third and most importantly, I certainly didn't mean that songs are written with no coherence whatsoever, like the quotes in the fool-the-spam-filter thread. Fourth, I said "deep meaning". Q.E.D.: Yes, Jackie, I realized all the points you made, and thought I made accomodation for them in my rebuttal. But let's not lump "Yummy Yummy" and other fluff bubblegum pop crap with serious songwriting, otherwise you could cite the Archies,
"Sugar, Sugar", The Partridge Family, Bobby Sherman, and on and on...and, BTW, Britney Spears' lyrics are just plain
bad, even for that "genre." I had the misfortune of watching them float across the screen in caption at the hospital one night...yeech, I dunno how anyone could attempt to sing that stuff.
America, as much as I liked them, were notorious for being weak in the lyric department, and penned what I have always voted as the worst lyric line in the history of rock, from
Ventura Highway, "alligator lizards in the air." No drug known to man can make *anything out of that garbage.
And, sure
A Horse With No Name was weird, but it was a *contrived weirdness...if it didn't, at least, *sound like a story, no one would've bought into it at the time.
And a song doesn't always have to strive for depth to be good...humor works, too. The storytelling of the true troubadour takes different avenues to hook into the deeper perspectives of life and love. But depth also comes through the fusion of the words and music, too. That's why, say, a love song written by Cole Porter has eons more depth that a love song written by Britney Spears.
In short: serious songwriters care about their words.
And the craft of songwriting necessitates some meaningful sequential lyric, no matter how light or worthless it may be...even "Yummy Yummy" tells a small story, for what it is.
You just can't throw words on music like you can splatter paint over a canvas, it just doesn't work.
But I think you have to admit that the 1910 Fruitgum Company wasn't striving for anything except chart success. And in that they were outright winners ... so the song worked.
let's not lump "Yummy Yummy" and other fluff bubblegum pop crap with serious songwriting
*I* was not doing this. Yummy Yummy IS a song, is it not?
Just for the record, it was that specific song I had in mind when I said: For many other songwriters, and I have to say for artists (painters) too, my personal opinion is that quite often there isn't any "deep" [significant look e] meaning. They just put a bunch of words down that sound good together, because they sound good together. Q.E.g-dD.
And just in case you couldn't tell, no, I am NOT in a good mood.
let's not lump "Yummy Yummy" and other fluff bubblegum pop crap with serious songwriting
*I* was not doing this. Yummy Yummy IS a song, is it not?
Just for the record, it was that specific song I had in mind when I said: For many other songwriters, and I have to say for artists (painters) too, my personal opinion is that quite often there isn't any "deep" [significant look e] meaning. They just put a bunch of words down that sound good together, because they sound good together.Jackie, folks who churn out stuff like "Yummy Yummy" aren't really songwriters, and certainly not *
artists....they're merely production machines meeting the market demand. In fact the so-called Archies weren't even really a group,
Sugar Sugar was all a studio con job, the group "The Archies" didn't exist at all. When you say "songwriter" my mind leaps immediately to folks like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, John Prine, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, etc...not pop-pabulum.
And don't forget, it was Bill Monroe's (the "Father of American Bluegrass" for those who might not know)
Blue Moon of Kentucky that was the catalyst for launching Elvis Presley's career because it was a
good song.
> folks who churn out stuff like "Yummy Yummy" aren't really songwriters, and certainly not *artists...
I'm with Jackie on this one, Mr Snob.
ah, yes. what is art?
And it's the songs that *seem the least well-crafted that are the best potential fodder for the deconstructionist cash cow.
The words:
"We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of sea sick,
the crowd called out for more.
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray.
And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face at first just ghostly
turned a whiter shade of pale.
She said there is no reason
and the truth is plain to see,
that I wandered through my playing cards
would not let her be.
One of sixteen vestal virgins
who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might just as well been closed.
And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face at first just ghostly
turned a whiter shade of pale."
This is considered by many critics and others to be one of the most significant rock anthems to come out of the 1960s. When asked about the words, Keith Reid (who wrote nearly all of Procul Harum's songs) said "It was just a lot of words which sounded good together. It doesn't mean anything at all".
What, then, is the qualitative difference (to the elitist - Juan) between these words and "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy"?
Good discussion, all. One thing I think we have to remember is that the "It was just a lot of words which sounded good together. It doesn't mean anything at all" response from a songwriter isn't necessarily the whole truth. It may just be that the songwriter doesn't want to get into the personal and nuanced meaning of every line with every reporter in the world. That's not to say it's not true in all cases, but.
Second, I think WO'N is working from a different definition of "song" than Jackie in this case. To WO'N, a "song" is a carefully crafted poem set to music. "Miss American Pie" is one, "Oops, I Did It Again" is not one. I don't know what term he might use for it (actually, I know several four-letter ones he might use for it), but it's not in the same league for him. The interesting thing to me is that Brittney Spears and other Popsters literally DO NOT write their own songs. They are written, mostly, by professional songwriters. People like Diane Warren have written dozens of hits sung by pop musicians all over the genrical map, from Meat Loaf and Aerosmith to Brittney and Celine Dion (I just found out she also wrote the theme to "Star Trek: Enterprise"!). While they may not have the level of soul-searching and integrity that WO'N is looking for, they clearly resonate with several million of our fellow travelers.
I have absolutely no problem with a song being light and entertaining, as long as it's a good song. I love Jimmy Buffet...he can be deep, A Pirate Looks At Forty, but most of his stuff is light-hearted party music, but it's *good light-hearted music. I don't wallow in elitism when it comes to music of any genre...my simple criterium is "is it a good song?" There's good music and there's bad music, of any kind. You don't have to like country music, and, many of us here, I know, loathe it, but in its own context there are good country songs and bad country songs. Old time Tin Pan Alley songs were production house stuff, but a lot of them are fun and hold up to this day. Loudon Wainwright III's Dead Skunk is a frivolous humor piece, but it's a great song. Pop music, too, from Al Jolson to just before the present scene, always seemed to produce some listenable and memorable stuff. In fact, most of the past icons from Elvis to the Beatles and on to Michael Jackson and Madonna (who worked with good writers) produced, at least, a couple songs, that were familiar to just about everyone of all ages, even if you didn't follow them or, indeed, disdained of them, some of their songs you just couldn't escape. In contrast, Britney Spears, supposedly an icon as big as any of these, doesn't have *one song I, or anyone I know of any age, can readily identify by the music or words. I know radio formatting is more specialized these days, but someone that *big should have one or two stand-out signature tunes that almost eveyrone knows (like Madonna's "Like A Virgin", for instance)...the same for the boy-band icons. Because the music and writing is just bad, bad, bad, even for light entertaining pop music.
And I like good country music, a genre vehemently disdained by a few on this board, so how can I be an elitist?
A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procul Harem), Cap, was a good song...the reason you're citing it now, the reason it has survived. So, for whatever reason, the words worked.
I've been involved with many songwriting groups, and currently attend a weekly workshop and songshare, and *most songwriters work *hard on their craft and art, they don't just throw words at music.
Mr Snob.Huh? So whattiya think of country music, Mr. Openess?
Who or what is Phlebas, please? Excellent points, Flatlander; and, your post illustrates eta's, and something I was trying to say way back: what is art, indeed, and who gets to decide? :-) Some people look at a painting of a big red dot and see all kinds of meanings in it; I'm afraid I would see 'a big ol' red dot' and nothing more. Back in about 1970 I bought a paperback called "The Poetry of Rock", and just loved it. Came across it some years later, and tossed it. I wonder if audiences who loved songs such as "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Don't Fence Me In"--and the writers of these songs--thought songs such as "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" were trash songs?
I found this at WikiPedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_PhlebasFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Consider Phlebas (ISBN 1857231384) is a science fiction book by Iain M. Banks first published in 1987. It is Banks' first science fiction novel, set in The Culture, and takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land; Look to Windward could be considered a follow up because of both the storyline and the fact that both titles are from that poem.
The novel revolves around the Idiran-Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. read here, for more on
The Culture...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
And then some of us have been finding poetry in spam email subject lines, the sole purpose of which is to get past spam filters. I'm sticking with 'just because you wrote it…'
I porbably ought to start a new thread just for this "Culture" stuff, but, oh well...
from Iain Banks description of Marain:
...enables the Culture Minds fully to indulge their seemingly congenital predilection of unnecessary obfuscation, wilful contrariness and the fluent generation of utter and profound confusion in others. http://homepages.compuserve.de/Mostral/artikel/marain.html
The great thing about language is that if you put two or three words together, people will try to understand what it is you intended to mean. It's why Chomsky had such a tough time finding ungrammatical sentences. Even "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" has some kind of meaning for some people. This human urge has led to a whole branch of philosophy called hermeneutics. Named after Hermes, the patron god of merchants, thieves, linguists, and bible exegetes. You gonna tell me that the poem Fleas "Adam / Had 'em." ain't high art? For shame. I'll go back to my roots and verbs now.
Some people look at a painting of a big red dot and see all kinds of meanings in it; I'm afraid I would see 'a big ol' red dot' and nothing more.
I know what you mean. It has to be a really good, big ol' red dot, for me to really like.
The last time I visited the Louvre I marvelled at all the folks elbowing each other out of the way to look at La Gioconda behind all its security. They were not looking at a piece of art. It was something else. As I pondered this, I notice that I was standing by myself in another room in the museum with my back to a smallish painting. I looked at it and it was a Vermeer. Now that was art. Being ignored by the plebes (consider ye whom?). But seriously, I never understood why folks genuinely liked Rothkos and Pollacks until I saw them up close and personal rather than in small pictures in some Time-Life series of art books. There was something there that I really liked, and in the end that's all that matters. It wasn't representational or maudlin, but it was art.
I think that art is a contract between the artist and her/his audience. The artist chooses something to show us, and we enjoy it or we don't. But like most tastes, it's hard to share this feeling that a work of art causes us to have. A lot of people complain about difficult works of art, say a film, and how they just want to be entertained. Well, I was entertained not by one piece of moderate genre art (i.e., the Mona Lisa), but rather by the crowds fighting over a glimpse of it. Does "meaning" in art mean a paratext that explains the art? Or is the emotional state it evokes in the viewer?
I think one of the gravest sins that modern academics have done in the eyes of J Q Public is to attempt to come to terms with popular art / culture using the same apparatus they developed for critiquing "serious" art.
...the same apparatus they developed for critiquing "serious" art.
"serious" only because of that apparatus.
"serious" only because of that apparatus.
Egg-zactly!
>Huh? So whattiya think of country music, Mr. Openess?
By and large, I loathe it. I would not however, dismiss it as "not real songwriting", purely on the grounds that it doesn't suit my personal taste. Just because I don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't music.
A good song always tells a story...Yeahbut ® only the ones with *good words and a good melody!
*********
...the group "The Archies" didn't exist at all.The next thing your gonna tell me is that the Monke
es didn't exist. {holding hands over ears "la-la-la-la-la"}
*********
When you say "songwriter" my mind leaps immediately to folks like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, John Prine, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, etc...Grouping those together ties songwriter to a specific type/form of song which were not necessarily all good or even less "pop-pabulum", not to mention a (quite)specific *era of writer. You could have at least included Bjork... or even Steely Dan
for that matter... but I digress...)
Steely Dan is great!
Dey wuz part of the "etc."
Uh, that's Monke
es.
The next thing your gonna tell me is that the Monkey's didn't exist. {holding hands over ears "la-la-la-la-la"}
After the movie Head was released in '68, one of the Beatles (either John or Paul) said it (and the Monkeys) was an accurate representation of the construction and marketing of a rock band. Just because the Monkeys didn't play their own instruments (no Beatle played on Eleanor Rigby) or write their own songs (Elvis?), you're going to deny them existence. How real were the Sex Pistols then? If the Archies didn't exist how could they have had a hit song on the charts? And don't get me started about Sig Sig Sputnik or Vanilla Ice.
Milli Vanilli
That was the name I was trying to remember. Not Vanilla Ice. Anywho, it's a far different thing to say something is bad art as opposed to not art. That's all.
there's also the difference between art and entertainment. sometimes art crosses over and is entertaining, and vice versa. but the two aren't necessarily the same. and aren't meant to be.
We may personally know a difference between art and entertainment but (*irregardless) they seem to, from what I can tell, have the same basic goals.
Communication/reflection/participation in/through/about ideas/ideals/creativity... maybe?
er, maybe.
I think that they both want to awaken or resonate with something inside us, but art hopes to reach something much deeper in ourselves than (*mere) entertainment.
hmmm...
Like what... truth, beauty... my spleen?
but the two aren't necessarily the same. and aren't meant to be.
Yep, I wasn't saying they should be. Just that for some critical judgment boils down to whether something was entertaining or not. Me, I find things entertaining that many find boring or ugly.
spleenheh, or kidneys if the concert's a good one...
Yep, I wasn't saying they should be. Just that for some critical judgment boils down to whether something was entertaining or not. Me, I find things entertaining that many find boring or ugly.right. I'm just discussing.
it's that
critical judgement piece that's missing for so many, I think. art makes me feel a connection with life, the universe and everything. entertainment can send me there, too, sometimes. some "art" never takes me there, though it may be entertaining.
you mean you all don't agree?!
As fun as that sounded... AHD remembers:
spleen...
... 2. Obsolete - This organ conceived as the seat of emotions or passions.
so many possibilities...
Jheem:
The Sex Pistols played their own instruments, albeit poorly at first. One of the basic tenets of punk rock was to go ahead and get out there and play, even if the talent wasn't yet up to snuff. It was in reaction to the overblown excesses of stadium rock at the time. Now, whether or not they were worth listening to is a question of taste. Me? I loved 'em!
Edit:
Oops! I don't think I absorbed your Pistols post before I reacted to it. My apologies. Touchy subject for this aging punk rocker.
"God save the Queen"
Not a problem, Comma-Doug. I loved the Sex Pistols. They transcended their Monkeehood.
Never Mind the Bollocks is a great album. With praise like Sir Cliff Richards gives in the link below, who needs anything else? My first time in London, during that horrendous heatwave in '76, I witnessed some punk scariness in Finsbury Park that has stayed with me over the decades. Certainly put the weekend punks in Berekeley during the '80s and '90s into perspective. (BTW, ever heard the French version of Anarchy in the UK?)
http://www.thefilthandthefury.co.uk/home.htmNow, to tie this post in with words and etymologies. Let's see we already did bollocks. How about the fact that band is plural in British English? Cf. the Beatles' "the band are not quite right" in
Only a Northern Song.
If The Archies didn't exist how could they have had a hit song on the charts?>
Most ‘60s bubblegum groups were faceless studio concoctions, made up of hired professionals and given nominal group identities after the fact. The Archies made no pretense of being a real band in the first place — their music, including the smash hit "Sugar, Sugar," was “performed" by the animated TV cartoon characters spun off from Archie comics. In reality, of course, they were a studio concoction made up of hired professionals (most notably lead singer Ron Dante), but in this case, they weren't technically faceless.The Archies were created by promoter Don Kirshner, who was coming off of a major success as the creator of the Monkees. In late 1967, Kirshner was hired as music supervisor for CBS' new Saturday morning cartoon The Archie Show, which was to feature a new original song every week. He immediately brought on producer Jeff Barry, who with Ellie Greenwich had formed one of the pre-eminent songwriting teams of the girl-group era (Greenwich also sang on several Archies records). Kirshner's original choice for lead singer was Kenny Karen, but Barry brought in Ron Dante, an experienced session singer who'd fronted the Detergents' novelty parody "Leader of the Laundromat"; Dante had met Barry at a Neil Diamond session, and had previously cut promos for Kirshner. Dante won the job, and Barry hired Jeanie Thomas as the group's female vocalist. When the TV show debuted, it was a hit, and the first Archies single "Bang Shang-a-Lang" nearly made the Top 20 in late 1968.
Shortly thereafter, Barry hired songwriter/backing vocalist Andy Kim, and replaced Thomas with Toni Wine. Barry and Kim co-wrote "Sugar, Sugar," which became a breakout smash in 1969; it topped the charts for four weeks, sold over three million copies in the U.S. alone, and wound up as Billboard's number one song of the year. Meanwhile, the TV show was expanded to a full hour, and Dante enjoyed a simultaneous Top Ten hit during "Sugar, Sugar"'s run, thanks to his lead vocal on the Cufflinks' "Tracy." The follow-up "Jingle Jangle" reached the Top Ten, but from there the Archies' chart success tailed off quickly. Their last Top 40 hit came in the spring of 1970 with "Who's Your Baby?"; the same year, Donna Marie replaced Toni Wine. However, by the end of 1970, Barry left the Archies to pursue other projects, and stories detailing the group's breakup named their primary personnel for the first time. Their final Barry-produced single was released in early 1971, although "A Summer Prayer for Peace" became a hit in South Africa later that summer. Ron Dante embarked on a short-lived solo career before moving into record production, and found substantial success as Barry Manilow's producer throughout the ‘70s; he also returned to singing on commercial jingles. Andy Kim went on to score a substantial solo hit in 1974 with "Rock Me Gently."<
Allmusic.com:
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDSUB040402062324300083&sql=Brn6uak4k5m3mI rest my case.
But aren't voices a type of instrument?
voicesand they wrote the song, too!
Yes, they (Paul) wrote it and sang it. I was just saying that they (Beatles) didn't play musical instruments on it. (And, I call playing the human voice singing. Tryit with somebody else's instrument.) I remember the shock I had when I found out that the main guitar work on While My Guitar Gently Weeps was not Harrison, but Eric Clapton. For the record, I like the Beatles. Being a word person, too, I attach importance to lyrics (though not so much to how they're generated).
Looks interesting. Thanks, etaoin. Thought I'd mention contemporary American philosopher, Arthur Danto, who has several books out on these kinds of questions: The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art , Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, and others. Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty are also contemperary and their books are rather accessible and available.
I call playing the human voice singing. Try it with somebody else's instrument.
Of course, you might have as much success trying to play Anne-Sophie Mutter's instrument as you would trying to play Anne Sophie von Otter's. Still, folks who make their living singing *do refer to their voices as their instruments.