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Do you mind when song lyrics dont make sense?

Some songs can be pretty nonsensical but there are some that just seem to make zero sense at all.

The Killers were one such band who got a lot of hate for lyrics that didnt make much sense but i didnt mind it, quite like The Killers actually.

Do nonsensical lyrics annoy you or do you not care as long as it sounds good?
 
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Pen

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Yeah I don't really care much about lyrics. Sure I can appreciate good lyrics when I do hear them, but it doesn't make or break a song for me. To me it's the music that matters the most.
 

Castle

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Nope. So long as they're eloquent.

One of my all time favorite bands is ZZTop. Most of their lyrics make no sense in their own context, and much of the rest of their songs are about inane subjects like sunglasses, girls with guns and greasy hamburgers. Songs like Sleeping Bag, Velcro Fly, and Tush are light sexual innuendos. La Grange is about a Texas brothel. Rough Boy is one of the few ZZTop songs with serious lyrics. Dusty Hill plays a popular cover of Elvis Presley's Viva Los Vegas, so that's not even their lyrics.

Aerosmith's Stairway to Heaven starts out as a sort of allegory before eventually turning into a series of vivid imagery. It still one of the finest rock ballads ever written.

Songs like The Eagles Hotel California do in fact have intended meaning in their lyrics, even if the lyrics seemingly make no sense. They do once you start reading it as a metaphor.

EDIT: HeHeHeh~ Led Zeppelin wrote and played Stairway to Heaven, Not Aerosmith. :fpalm: I'm always getting those two mixed up :sweat: Sorry to freak you out there "Mellow" Ezlo :shrug:
 
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funnier6

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I don't, I like a lot of songs that don't make sense, but for a song to be truly great it's got to have great music and great lyrics.

Also, how does Hotel California not make sense? It has a whole plot thing going on.
 

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Also, how does Hotel California not make sense? It has a whole plot thing going on.

It got around that Hotel California was about drugs and devil worship, which is what happens to songs any time there are a bunch of people who can't figure out wtf the lyrics mean. Other people figured it was just this weird Twilight Zoney- esque story but it's actually a metaphor for the hollywood high life and living on the edge and how it can suck you in and burn you out. Other Eagles songs were no stranger to this theme. The Hotel California album was rife with it. Most notably Life in the Fast Lane which tells a much clearer narrative but is about the exact same thing.

But the lyrics of Hotel are pretty whimsical.
Her mind is Tiffany twisted. She's got the mercades benz. She's got a lot of pretty pretty boys that she calls friends -what?
So I called up the Captain. Please bring me my wine. We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine -huh? wine isn't a spirit.

Of course this is where the devil worship theories come from:
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast

steely knives is also a reference to steely dan who made their own veiled eagles reference in one of their songs.
 

TheRockinStallion

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Having listened to System of a Down for many years, I've actually grown to like the concept of nonsensical lyrics. Makes me appreciate some of the old Beatles tunes like "I Am the Walrus" and "Come Together" as well.
 

Azure Sage

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Considering most of the music I listen to has lyrics in a language I don't even speak, nope not at all. Lyrics may as well just be another instrument to me. As long as I like how it all sounds together, that's good enough for me. I think the only time I'd care is if the lyrics were perverse or vulgar.
 

funnier6

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It got around that Hotel California was about drugs and devil worship, which is what happens to songs any time there are a bunch of people who can't figure out wtf the lyrics mean. Other people figured it was just this weird Twilight Zoney- esque story but it's actually a metaphor for the hollywood high life and living on the edge and how it can suck you in and burn you out. Other Eagles songs were no stranger to this theme. The Hotel California album was rife with it. Most notably Life in the Fast Lane which tells a much clearer narrative but is about the exact same thing.

But the lyrics of Hotel are pretty whimsical.
Her mind is Tiffany twisted. She's got the mercades benz. She's got a lot of pretty pretty boys that she calls friends -what?
So I called up the Captain. Please bring me my wine. We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine -huh? wine isn't a spirit.

Of course this is where the devil worship theories come from:
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast

steely knives is also a reference to steely dan who made their own veiled eagles reference in one of their songs.

Well I knew it was a metaphor for the hollywood thing but I always think of it like a twilight zone thing, I mean, any way you look at it it still makes some sort of sense, at the very least you could say it's a very strange story.
 
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Kylo Ken

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Yes, I do mind. Iactually alter lyrics to make them make sense cause if how much it annoys me
 

YIGAhim

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Well-

I don't like lyrics in general, so lyrics that make little to no sense are even worse!

Yes, they are the least important part of the song for me, but if there are lyrics, I'd really like them to make sense. I'm also NOT a fan of vulgar, or offensive language in songs.
 

Dizzi

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if the lyrics don't really make sense I sometimes do my own lyrics but then I am deaf so I may be mishearing them
 

pyjamas5189

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It's not a deal breaker for me if they dont make sense but I think one of the resons I like country music is because a lot of the time it is a story set to music
 

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Aerosmith's Stairway to Heaven starts out as a sort of allegory before eventually turning into a series of vivid imagery. It still one of the finest rock ballads ever written.
Aerosmith.

Aerosmith?

Freaking Aerosmith?

You're killing me here!

...

*breathes*

Anyway, Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven is a fantastic example of a song that many praise as being really well written and an amazing song. The composition is good, but when you actually break down the lyrics, they make little to no sense overall. The band were clearly high when they wrote it.

If you want to talk about nonsensical lyrics, look at 95% of Beatles tunes. Constantly regarded as one of the greatest rock bands ever, their songs rarely actually make sense lyrically; most of them are just a bunch of nonsense. Classic example of band members being too high to write good lyrics.

People often criticize modern day music for having lyrics that are too vulgar or sexually explicit. While the actual words songs nowadays use may be more vulgar than back in the day, the vast majority of classic rock songs from the 60's through the 80's are about sex and/or drugs. They're just presented through metaphors and are more poetic in nature than they are now. Even songs like House of the Rising Sun, which is lyrically ambiguous, is often interpreted as having been written about a brothel (the exact meaning, however, is unknown since the lyrics have been changed over time like a game of telephone).

EDIT: I forgot to answer the OP's question lol.

Basically, no. It doesn't bother me. When I listen to music, I listen more for the actual composition than I do for its lyrical content. While I appreciate songs that do have good lyrics, I don't mind if they don't. There's a lot more to music that catches my interest than just what the lyrics are.
 
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