Interactive Fiction relies on carefully chosen prose.
But IF is an art, and very often IF authors look to other art forms for inspiration.
Sometimes that inspiration is music. Music with words.
And sometimes great music lets us down with its words.
What amazing tracks do you recommend, to which we must never learn the lyrics?
NB: I am not asking you to dig out all sorts of lyrics which you consider to be culturally unacceptable. I am looking for examples of epic music where the vocal was untroubled by really, really bad authorship. And so long as you donāt actually understand the words, the piece retains its power.
Therefore please be careful about spoilers.
Here are my initial suggestions (all from the UK, and deliberately of a certain age. Please update us with the latest):
I enjoy needling my friend that Dioās āRainbow in the Darkā is a physical impossibility due to the way light works until he finally screams āITāS A METAPHOR!ā
A lot of Puccini is like this intentionally. The words are really pretty on their own, but itās so funny to me to listen to La Boheme and have a guy say āYou wanna know my job and stuff? Iām a poet and I write and I just liveā but have it be one of the prettiest songs.
A lot of Adventure time songs are like this (I got into it a few years ago and then my son did too, and the remixes online are really fun). āBacon Pancakesā has really great remixes but the song lyrics are just āBacon pancakes, making bacon pancakes, take some bacon and-a put it in a pancake, bacon pancakes, thatās what Iām gonna make, bacon pancakesā. All the remixes are good, like this one: Troskot - Adventure Time Bacon Pancakes (dubstep/hardstyle remix) - YouTube
Isnāt a lot of opera like this? We hear gorgeous Italian phrases that sound epic to us but the subtitle is āPerhaps I shall walk over there. Your father is in such a temper today; he wouldnāt eat breakfast.ā
I maintain that a lot of Michael Jackson songs have really pedestrian lyrics that were elevated by his artistry. If you read the lyrics to āThrillerā and put the groove and the beat completely out of your head itās what a grade-schooler would write for a Halloween competition. Apparently the melody actually started as a completely different song that had nothing to do with horror. Thatās the way the music industry works, though - a talented vocalist can sing the phone book and entertain people.
Iāve also heard rumors that one of my favorite songs by him, āSmooth Criminal,ā actually is comprised of dummy lyrics he improvised to a demo track that was already laid down with the intention of them being rewritten and improved as the song got produced, but nothing ever worked as well as his weird cryptic murder-mystery detective story imagery and they went with that.
Oh, and I must mention āCake by the Oceanā which for a period of time was always playing on my car radio when it was popular and I had absolutely no comprehension what the lyrics were or what it meant despite grooving to it. After research, itās youāre typical āadults wonāt understandā ditty about sex, potentially on a beach.
My pastor in high school told us about how he really liked the song āMy Sharonaā and bought a cassette so he could blast it in his car whenever he wantedā¦then finally read the lyrics and was likeā¦
A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace,
And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace,
And achieve it all with music that came quickly from afar,
Then taste the fruit of man recorded losing all against the hour
And assessing points to nowhere, leading every single one
A dewdrop can exalt us like the music of the sun,
And take away the plain in which we move,
And choose the course youāre running
On Italian Operaā¦ One must know what Italian is actually: a mixed verbal-gestual language. when the recitation is in Italian from an Italian, isnāt only the voice, but also the body.
Opera is something to be seen, not only heard. Better Opera DVDs or BD than CDs, in other words.
if one always wonder why Italians always wildly gestures when speaking, now know why.
Radiohead are masters at creating beautiful songs with non-sensical lyrics:
Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in maths,
he buzzes like a fridge
Heās like a detuned radio
Karma police, arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party
(But of course they may make total sense to some people.)
I heard that for the first time when I was a teenager getting a midnight snack and hearing the radio. I thought I had dreamt it or misremembered it for almost 20 years, and then I heard again and couldnāt believe it was real.
Iāve heard people cite it as the first rap song, which is a little iffy
I actually know all the words to Rapture. I think Heart of Glass is more problematic.
Certainly not. Debbie lived in a world where she had access to rap/ hiphop earlier than your average Joe. She just popularized it for white people first.
Only tangentially related, but Iām always looking for an opportunity to recommend literal videos. They probably wonāt mean much to anyone under 40, but if you were there for the MTV revolution, youāll die laughing.
