sharke
craigb
I feel the need to confess that I've been a music lover all my life, yet I rarely ever knew who the band members really were... Same thing with lyrics, I usually didn't play attention to them either. For me, it was more of a selfish audio pleasure and, quite frankly, for whatever reason, I found a lot of the artwork and lyrics embarrasing. I'm sure it definitely had to do with how I was brought up (an only child by older parents - who were 34 & 36 when they had me - their morals and discipline were from an older generation). I had, by far, the cleanest bedroom of anyone I knew yet my Mom would still come in when she thought it needed even more straightening up and say "I bet your friend's rooms don't look like this!" Well, she was right, only not in the way she would imagine!
I'm the same to be honest....I'm ashamed to say I rarely pay attention to lyrics, unless they're very clearly sung and/or obviously clever or insightful in some way (and usually that's only because someone else has point it out to me). From a kid, I heard lyrics as nothing more than a humanely articulated melody. It usually leads to embarrassment when I try to sing along with other people. I generally have a pretty screwed up idea of what the lyrics are. There are some exceptions - for instance Nic Jones singing the old folk song Little Musgrave, it's such gripping storytelling that I cannot help but follow along.
Lyrics mattered to me for as long as I struggled to learn english. Once I got comfortable enough w/ the language, I realized that the bulk of them were pretty poor, w/ some noticeable exceptions of course. Gems like:
Bang your head against the stage,
Like you never did before,
Make it ring, make it bleed,
Make it really sore,
In a frenzied madness,
With your leather and your spikes,
Heads are bobbing all around,
It's hot as Hell tonight.
Not. ;)
But from that point on, I ceased paying attention, pretty much.