I'm a big lyrics guy. If a track has vocals, I want to know each word being sung. Back in the pre-Internet era that constituted my youth, the artist either included lyrics with the CD/cassette tape (yeah, I'm that old), or you had to buy books like the one pictured, which I did as a teen. Geeky? Yes. But it's the only way to properly appreciate songs like "Desolation Row," "Idiot Wind" and "Jokerman."
These days, all those classic Dylan lyrics can be found here on his official site. But not all artists are so open with their words. And it troubles me to learn that even less are including lyrics in the liner notes. Anyway, here's the piece that prompted me to think of yet another way to work Dylan into a blog post.
From The Guardian:
In the old days it was easy: you bought your album, put it on your hi-fi and listened to it while reading the lyrics on the record sleeve. If you were being dumped, again, then knowing all the words to Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart was important.
But a survey released yesterday shows that we are finding it harder to find accurate song lyrics – and we don't like it.
The National Year of Reading campaign questioned 4,000 people to gauge the importance of lyrics and found that 90% felt that reading the words helped them gain a full appreciation of the music. But 50% said that lyrics are less accessible than they were five years ago, with fewer CDs now carrying the words.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2008.