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FtttG  Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.  3mo ago (docs.google.com)   Edited 3mo ago   2180 thread views

The Motte infidelity survey

docs.google.com

UPDATE: My analysis available here.

In yesterday's small-scale questions thread, @cjet79 asks why the song "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers has had such staying power, famously staying in the UK singles charts decades after its initial release. Some explanations (including my own) point to its compositional elements; others focus on its lyrics and subject matter. @100ProofTollBooth argues that it's a very universal and relatable song, as "The experience of infidelity (to some degree) is common to many (most? idk) people."

I'm curious if this is really the case, so I decided to go Aella mode and created a simple survey to find out about people's experiences with infidelity. It consists of a few demographic questions (age, sex, sexual orientation, relationship style), then asks you if you've ever had an unfaithful partner, then asks you if you've ever been unfaithful to a partner.

Completely anonymous, and I've set it up so the form doesn't collect email addresses if you're logged in.

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Are people really listening to lyrics of songs that much? I mostly don't, regardless of what language they're in, even if I'm the one singing. I'm listening to the music.

Lyrics are often borderline incoherent and made to fit the music, not the other way around.

I always try to listen to lyrics. They're a major part of songs. Sometimes it makes them worse, most of the time it makes them better.

There's plenty of music where I enjoy listening to the lyrics but that kind of rock song often sounds to me like all the action is taking place in a fairly limited section of the mid-range, often with added distortion on the guitars and vocals that are pitched more towards shouting such that it tends to merge into a smear of tuneful noise rather than distinct musical elements. That doesn't help.

I like the Killers, and I do pay attention to lyrics, but I think you're right in that most of the Killers' lyrics are nonsense. Sure, the song has general themes of jealousy, but not much coherence beyond that.

Consider the first two lines. "Comin' out of my cage and I've been doin' just fine / Gotta, gotta be down because I want it all." These lyrics barely make sense and seemingly have nothing to do with the rest of the song. And then you get to lines like "Turning saints into the sea / Swimming through sick lullabies" that make even less sense. Sure, you can try to interpret them to mean something, but they're mostly just there to sound cool. I doubt Brandon Flowers intended any deeper meaning.

It's not even clear to me that the song is about infidelity. I read it as being about a guy who is pining after a woman who its not interested in him, and he is imagining scenarios where she is sleeping with other men ("it's all in my head").

Are you an ESL? I've had similar issues with songs in English where it's hard for me to understand the lyrics unlike with my mother tongue.

But otherwise it varies on the song and the type of music. Some lyrics are really good, others are incoherent(and that's a good thing), others still can be bad, but still work really because the singer's voice carries the song. Defenestration Song by Have a Nice Life is a good example of great lyrics and the singer's voice elevate a song to a level it could never reach without them. Another example is Coil's live session version of Triple Sons and the One You Bury. But the latter is probably too experimental.

I prefer instrumental music overall though.

Even in Finnish there is only one band where I pay any attention to lyrics beyond individual lines and they're legendary for having outstanding lyrics (they're obviously also largely untranslatable without losing all their meaning, cleverness and beauty).

I am but the language doesn't matter and I have no trouble understanding the lyrics. I generally don't think about the lyrics in Swedish either.

At most I think about individual phrases in a song and how they work together with music.

I agree with you, I don't think the success of "Mr. Brightside" is primarily explicable by its lyrical content.

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