A 1,400-kilometre slog from the Mediterranean to London brought a useful reminder of one of pop music’s functions. It makes a long, tedious motorway drive more bearable.
Radio playlists are limited, unimaginative and contain plenty that is excruciating. But there is enough scope for station-hopping, along with breaks for the news, to let us overlook an obvious defect of modern songs: the routine awfulness of its words.
Pop music, a phrase commonly associated with the 1960s even for those born long since, provides pleasure and even comfort to listeners. As well as singing along to it in the car, when dancing or at live performances, we find genuine musical merit. The Beatles and Beach Boys composed melodies to be remembered. The Rolling Stones were – still are – capable of generating excitement.
But when we see the lyrics written down, or think them through, negative feelings can intrude. In so many cases, the words are pure drivel.
There are exceptions but they often occur in related genres, such as folk music, or in languages other than the English that dominates pop. Wonderful wordplay enriches the work of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon. Richard Thompson, a founder member of the British folk-rock band Fairport Convention, is an accomplished poet as well as a superb guitarist. An English singer, June Tabor, correctly identifies Anachie Gordon, a traditional ballad in eight verses on the common theme of a young woman refusing to abandon a low-born boyfriend for the wealthy suitor chosen by her father, as "wasting not a single word".
But what must we make of the words listed by Buzzfeed.com in a feature headlined 27 Of The Most Mind-Bogglingly Stupid Song Lyrics Of All Time?
"If the light is off, then it isn't on," sang Hilary Duff in So Yesterday. "Only time will tell if we stand the test of time," was a gem from Van Halen's Why Can't This Be Love?
There is much worse. Buzzfeed’s list included lyrics that are not just vulgar but illiterate. Even when the writer seems to make an effort, the results can be irritating.
Elton John's tribute to Marilyn Monroe, Candle in the Wind, has these lines written by Bernie Taupin: "Even when you died/Oh the press still hounded you/All the papers had to say/Was that Marilyn was found in the nude."
If that really was “all the papers had to say”, as opposed to saying a great deal more, no report would have stretched beyond a paragraph, doubtless to Taupin and John’s approval.
A colleague at The National once urged me to write about Alanis Morissette's hit single, Ironic. I never got round to it, but he had a point; Morissette describes a series of unhappy coincidences – "a traffic jam when you're already late", "a no-smoking sign in a cigarette break, "meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife" – and none matches standard dictionary definitions of irony.
At least Morissette’s words pass one test. They read well on the page. And she can take refuge in secondary definitions that allow irony as a “state of affairs or event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result”.
But then pedants, as pop song writers might eagerly point out, have been known to dismiss secondary definitions.
French pop music, unavoidable on my road trip, has the opposite problem: the lyrics can be eloquent but the effect is marred by predictable or unduly smooth tunes and arrangements.
Perhaps the moral has all the simplicity of old-fashioned pop. We should be content to listen, enjoy and forget the words.
Colin Randall is a former executive editor of The National