Re: Lyrics in Liner Notes (Was Gillian Welch)

Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 16:48:02 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
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Most folk fans seem to prefer lyric sheets, but not everyone wants them. I
think Gillian Welch could easily have put the lyrics in the packaging if she'd
wanted them there, I sincerely doubt if it was in any sense a budgetary
concern. More likely it was an aesthetic choice.
Mick Jagger said half the fun of listening to music is puzzling out the lyrics,
and he has a great love of American blues music. How foreign is that dialect
to him? Not as foreign as it was before he spent all those hours listening to
that music and figuring out what was being sung. How could he ever have become
such a great blues singer if he'd never devoted himself to that task?
Imo, lyric sheets divorce the words of a song from their full meaning. The
colors and shades of meaning a good vocalist gives a song are nowhere to be
found on the peice of paper that distracts you from hearing them.
Where is the lyric insert for Blonde on Blonde?
kgold wrote:
> I prefer having the lyrics, but it certainly wouldn't affect my
> purchasing decision.
>
> Ideally, one could always reconstruct the words. In practice, often
> people don't agree on the words even to contemporary songs. With age,
> changes in language, and when the song is not in the listener's first
> language, it gets much harder.
>
> As for production costs, one could always put the words on the web.
> The web will probably last longer than the CD.
>
> "David Rintoul" <email-address-deleted> writes:
> >
> > So, I'd like to throw this question out for public debate. Should artists
> > write their lyrics out on their liner notes? Does it make a difference as
> > to whether or not you would buy or enjoy a particular CD?
>
> --
> --
> Ken Goldman email-address-deleted 914-784-7646