Readers recommendMusicReaders recommend: songs about choosing and using words – results
RR regular Paul Hayes, aka Fuel, picks the playlist from last week's lexicographical free-for-all
I admire the honesty in Thin Lizzy’s Don’t Believe a Word: the way they state, "Words are so easily spoken", making words seem disposable, replaceable and untrustworthy. But are words so throwaway? Not if you wish to live honestly. Rather than invoking hard-rocking wit with a get-out clause, Givers choose their Words carefully because they know they’ll see them again. Their rousing pop song is about using words as a guiding light for action.
Tom Tom Club’s Wordy Rappinghood mixes pop, funk and rap to celebrate words; their failings and strengths, their joys and limits as well as the trouble they cause. My favourite line: "Words are like a certain person. Can’t say what they mean. Don’t mean what they say." It’s smart, sassy dance music.
The emphatic electronic funk of Cameo’s Word Up! declares to those in the know that if you “say the code word … you’ll be heard”. But just what is that word? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
It’s doubtful that the precocious, left-of-the-dial pop musicians in Let’s Active would give you an answer. They use words to make sense of the chaotic images in their lives, telling us that by Writing the Book of Last Pages their world "gets more real each day".
Grounded in grim reality, Talk Talk ask: "Where do words begin?" Their question is set within the context of lyrics about a loved one who chooses and uses words to maintain a facade constructed from "golden promises". Ultimately, actions speak louder than words, leading to Mark Hollis reproachfully singing I Don’t Believe in You.
Blackalicious choose and use words that are facetious, cutting and self-aggrandising as they rap over ever-quickening beats through Alphabet Aerobics to prove their lyrical prowess and verbal superiority. Also taking us on a wry, humorous journey into the use of words – and especially how we use them to differentiate ourselves – is Smiley Culture, who gives us a Cockney Translation while "fast chatting" over a reggae beat in his London version of Jamaican patois.
Such wordplay is fun but words can get spun and twisted beyond their meaning. Killing Joke’s apocalyptic-sounding Requiem asks: "When the meaningful words, when they cease to function, when there's nothing to say. When will it start bothering you?" When that happens should you cut up sentences and randomly rearrange the words like William S Burroughs did to try to discover the true meaning of a text? 23 Skidoo do just that within the supple groove of Last Words. Band member Tom Heslop affirms: "Oh yeah, [the cut-up technique] works. It always comes out with some meaning, even if it’s a bit strange."
I’m not sure we’d all agree on what that meaning is, though, which is why The Sensual Woman of the Herbaliser’s song argues for the correct use of words – even those words prudes would consider "bad". This is because words used in the correct context enhance activities. The Herbaliser’s song is about lovemaking – a physical activity. However, using words to describe abstract concepts is far more difficult.
In Time and a Word, Yes sing that "love" is the right word for them. It’s as an uplifting anthem from when love was the right word. But in the modern era, the Real Tuesday Weld sing: "These days who knows what [love] means?" Their track is personal, circumspect and guarded. I love the way it stops and starts at the end – as if it wants to say something else but then stumbles away lost for words, hoping it’s said the right things in the right way, seemingly muttering, "And these are the Last Words I will say to you."
The playlist
1. Thin Lizzy – Don’t Believe a Word
3. Tom Tom Club – Wordy Rappinghood
5. Let’s Active – Writing the Book of Last Pages
6. Talk Talk – I Don’t Believe in You
7. Blackalicious – Alphabet Aerobics
8. Smiley Culture – Cockney Translation
11. The Herbaliser – The Sensual Woman
13. The Real Tuesday Weld – Last Words
Read all the readers’ recommendations on last week’s blog, from which Fuel selected the songs above.
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