I read an article from The Los Angeles Times today about singer-songwriter James McMurtry (from July 21, 2008 by Geoffrey Himes). He says that his lyrics are character-driven and always have been, something that comes as somewhat of a surprise to anyone who listens to popular music nowadays. But when we look back at songs that have lasted — “Hurricane” having been performed by Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco and the Milltown Brothers — many of them are character-driven. Even if you look back at popular music from the Jazz Age, many of them describe people to present social attitudes or situations (and further back than that — even Medieval music describes humans interacting with mystical things, not just the mystical things themselves). When people think of ancient myths, the Greek gods pop into mind, but it isn’t the gods we connect to — beings who play with us like pawns — it is the victims of the gods, because we all feel like we’re being toyed with at times (who hasn’t looked up at a time of tragedy and asked “why?”?). We cannot connect with something inhuman because of just that — it is inhuman. It would be akin to god trying to comprehend the mind of a mortal: He could never, in his wildest imaginings, hope to understand how it feels to be finite or scared or alone. Likewise, we cannot connect with anything that doesn’t feel these same things because we cannot imagine existence without them. Any lyrics that aren’t at least somewhat character-driven — a song about a teacup, for example — would likely not last a month in the minds of listeners, unless the teacup draws us into the aging woman drinking from her fine china at the mahogany table that never seats more than one. That song is likely to strike us twenty years from hearing it as we stir milk into chai, waiting for the phone to ring as we discover ourselves alone at the table. So why, then, as a writer, am I surprised that a musician would recognize this (and not just any musician, the son of novelist Larry McMurtry)? Perhaps I listen to too much pop, with the “I” and “you” always undefined, waiting for the listener to do the work.
Another part of the article that drew my attention was McMurtry’s act of discovery in writing the characters he sings. The act of discovery, to me, is one of the reasons story-telling is still around. Not only does the listener/reader learn about the characters (and hopefully themselves) from the story, but the story-teller learns to find something like meaning in the randomness around us. It is the purest part of story-telling, the truth at the core of all art. So why, if discovery helps all involved and characters are such a staple of our perception of the world, don’t we typically hear more music with a focus on the characters involved? Is it the massive amounts of vague nonsense being spewed through our radios? Is it a lack of attention spans long enough to allow for full character development? Whatever the reasoning is, I think we, especially in the art world, need to start working against this overflow of vague ideas and start working toward something definable, something tangible. I’m tired of songs that rely on music videos to provide meaning for abstract lyrics. If your song is about love, show me the lovers, why they argue, what they do when no one is around! I want you to tell me about myself through other people, not draw indiscernible figures in the air that melt as soon as the music fades! Specifics are the key to good art — we cannot connect to someone who is “Everyman” (thus, the reason why the Everyman plays died hundreds of years ago). So why are we still inundated with music that has the “I and you” format — this vague set of undefined people who apparently interact in everything from love-making to break-ups to drug trips? Why are we surrounded by art that doesn’t do the work, in fact depends on the listener to do the work for the artist? The intent of all art is to make the viewer/listener think (thereby working), but when I have to fill in the blank you didn’t even consider? No way. And pop artists wonder why people refuse to pay for a CD of tracks that mean nothing more than “I have a FABULOUS publicist.”
That James McMurtry, though? Expect to see that disc in my collection. Any artist who still does his share of the work is worth paying for in my book.
