If you break down most rock songs and look at the lyrics on a piece of paper, it's all about melody. It's all about presentation. And a lot of bands are really great, but you can't understand a word of what they say.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Music expresses what cannot be put into words I like to think, and I think the band makes a good go at it.
Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
Lyrics can be important, but ultimately, what pulls people in on a song is melody and the tracks and the way music feels.
It's not just music. To me, it's songwriting more than anything. A lot of people say it's expression, but to me, it's more than that.
If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.
Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.
When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.
A song is a lot of things. But, first of all, a song is the voice of its time. Setting words to music gives them weight, makes then somehow easier to say, and it helps them to be remembered.
There is a lot of melody and things that sound familiar in hundreds of songs.
Music is about textures as well as melody.