Lyrical Dissonance

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi, Grant. This is Linda. I’m calling from Lexington, South Carolina.

Hi, Linda. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Linda. What would you like to talk with us about?

A co-worker of mine and I were sitting together in the office, and a Bruce Springsteen song came on, Dancing in the Dark.

And, you know, that song’s been around forever, and we’re just sort of bobbing along to it.

And I stopped, and I kind of started paying attention to the lyrics.

I said, you know, this song’s kind of a bummer.

He goes, what are you talking about?

I go, well, he just said he wants to change his clothes, his hair, his face.

He’s living in a dump.

And I said, and he goes, I never really noticed that before.

I said, yeah, neither.

And I looked up to more of the lyrics, and it’s just really a downer of a song.

Well, my question is, there are a lot of other songs where it sounds upbeat, but the lyrics are really kind of terrible.

You’re kind of just jamming along, you know.

And I thought, is there a word for that kind of song where a song is upbeat sounding, but the lyrics are really a downer?

Yeah, that’s weird, isn’t it?

It catches you up short.

Up a beat music, but downer lyrics.

Yeah.

Do you remember 99 Red Balloons?

99 Red Balloons.

And that’s such a perky, fun little song.

You could almost see it on a children’s show, but it ends up being about war and bombing out a city.

Right, right.

And you’re just bobbing along to it, especially the German version.

I don’t know what she’s saying.

Exactly.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, I think it’s even worse in the German.

Gosh, one word, I don’t know, the best term I’ve seen for that is lyrical dissonance.

Lyrical dissonance.

Yeah.

I mean, you’ll find that, although I don’t think that’s very colorful.

But, you know, it’s sort of the dissonance between the lyrics and the music.

But you’ve identified a phenomenon that I think we can all relate to.

I don’t know.

Do you have any others?

Well, you know, years ago we talked about on the show about the interesting word agathacacological, which means something that’s both good and bad.

It’s got really obvious Greek roots, if you know a little bit of Greek at all.

And I think generally agathacacological could describe this kind of song.

So the good part is the peppy music and the bad part is the meaning of the words.

I also thought about the Italian word chiaroscuro, which is both light and dark.

And then I thought, and this is even further out, there’s a French word.

You probably know the art term trompe l’oeil, which means to trick the eye.

Well, there’s one for the ear.

It’s trompe l’oeil.

Oh, wow.

I kind of like that.

But this is specifically for kinds of phrases in French that are almost tongue twisters.

They depend upon the tendency in French for final consonants not to be pronounced.

Or there’s a lot of words that sound exactly the same but are written very different.

So any one of those, maybe, if you wanted to try to launch them out there.

Yeah.

But I do like, I like lyrical dissonance.

Yeah, yeah, well, I like Agatha Cacological.

I mean, the Agatha, of course, is from the Greek word for good, and you see that in the name Agatha.

And then the cacos is like bad, like cacophony.

Oh, there we go, yeah.

Yeah, that kind of thing.

Wow, but lyrical dissonance is so much easier to say.

Well, it is.

I don’t know, Agatha Cacological.

But there’s so many other songs out there.

I did a search, and just for fun, and I’ve seen some people have written some articles about this.

And another Bruce song, Born in the USA.

You Can Call Me Out by Paul Simon.

Eddie Grant, Electric Avenue.

Prince, 1999.

Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People.

Hey Ya by Outkast.

And I thought of another one, Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon.

And I thought of that one because one of the greatest uses of alliteration is one of the most horrible lyrics, I think, in music.

Little old lady got mutilated late last night.

Oh, that’s horrible.

In Little Italy?

Like, a little old lady died in that song, y’all.

Oh, no.

I didn’t know that.

And you’re like, da, what can you da-da-da do with my spreadsheets?

Really?

Yeah.

In Electric Avenue.

Wow, I didn’t know that.

I’m going to have to go back and listen.

All right.

Thanks for your call.

Rock on, Linda.

Thank you so much, y’all.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, there’s a giant Reddit thread about this.

Oh, dear.

Yeah, I bet we’re going to hear lots and lots from listeners, too.

I think if you Google songs that have happy music but sad lyrics, you will find the Reddit thread at the top of your search results.

Oh, I bet you will.

And it’s fun but also sad.

You’re like, oh, you’re ruining it for me.

Oh, now you’re sad about it.

Well, no, but I’m just saying I don’t want where the lyrics are all super hypey positive and the music is all super hypey.

You should just be really happy, mister, just to hear this song.

I don’t want any part of that.

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