In a song, there’s multiple different ingredients that go into making it sound pleasing to the ear. It might be the drums, the chords, or melody that you enjoy the most. However, the lyrics also play a major part . Of course it depends on the words being sung or rapped whether the lyrics stick or not. If the lyrics are a bunch of nothing, that’s not very memorable.
My favorite songs are ones that have meaningful, symbolic, or metaphorical lyrics that tell a story. Recently I found a new favorite artist by the name of Quadeca. He used to just be a youtube rapper that would make videos and diss tracks. But in the past couple years or so, he's dramatically changed his style of music to be this experimental, melodic, and atmospheric vibe that’s hard to describe. They’re kinda weird, but also really pretty and deep. The songs on his SCRAPYARD album especially have this unique floatiness to them. The lyrics are passionate and each word feels intentional. It’s tough to show what I mean with just text but here’s a favorite verse of mine from his song, “EASIER”.
It's so hard to admit that I wanted you
I was busy bein' busy
I was busy doin' everything in my strength not to acknowledge you
I miss bein' alone, the way I was alone
Before all the resentment had gotten through
I believe he’s talking about how hard it was after experiencing the love of this person and how he couldn’t get over them, and how he misses being alone before he met her. At the same time, he still genuinely loved this person. The lyrics are mostly left up to the listener's interpretation, though. This song in particular is such a mess of emotions and it’s definitely not a feel-good song or anything, but it’s so heartfelt. I think it’ll probably speak to anyone with… an ex really. That’s what you want from a song, you want to make the listener be like “That’s just like me for real.” You wanna speak to the listener, and I feel like Quadeca does a great job of making you feel the emotion he’s feeling.
I mean there are countless songs that have this kind of depth in their lyrics, I just wanted to plug this guy in the blog. Another guy I want to plug is brakence who’s actually collabed with Quadeca. Brakence’s music can be edgy and emo, but they are pretty fire. And like Quadeca he has a way with words that make you feel some sort of way. There’s a magic in his music that’s unlike any other artist, with so much raw emotion in his voice and lyrics where you can’t help but do a stank face and bop your head.
So next time you listen to some of your favorite tunes try to pay attention to the lyrics to really get the full experience. You can listen to music any way you want, but I feel like to get a better understanding of the artist and topic of a song, lyrics can really change your perspective on something, or the song itself. My favorite part of making music is coming up with the fire bars to accompany the instrumental, and all the storytelling aspects is why.
