# why dont i hear the words?



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

name a famous bands song and unless ive heard the song a billion times i couldnt tell you one part of it, unless its the same word over and over, ive always wondered is that a result of growing up om classical music? or am i just tuning out the lyrics for some unknown reason?


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

I've experienced this too, also mainly with radio music (rather than anything I like). I think a lot of pop artists just kinda lazily shape the lyrics to some vocal melody they came up with earlier; also, it doesn't help that the new stuff sounds unnaturally polished and protooled, robbing the vocals of the kind of natural textures your ears are attuned to when you listen to someone speak.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I grew up on classical, almost exclusively. For over for over fifty years now, I've been listening and playing. All that time, I have listened to a tiny bit of pop music (compared to classical, a fraction of a percent).

Whether it is pop, art song, opera, cantata or oratorio, the text has never been a primary or even secondary concern or interest to me. If the music has engaged me past that number of exposures, I then look into the text.

A friend of mine explained it well when the subject of opera came up at a social gathering. She said, "I don't care what the words are. If the music does not tell me enough of what the emotions are, the text won't help or fix that.." She then went on to say if the music did pull her in that direction, then she would look into what, specifically, was being sung.

That is exactly how I though of it, but had not articulated that, which is why I remember her saying it so many years ago.

For some, the notes Must Say Everything _first_. (I'd add, if they don't, you have a much lesser quality work on your hands / in your ears -- my opinion.)

I think this is just the way some take any and all kinds of musics, and there are others who are almost completely text-bound. Scratch the average pop music consumer, and I doubt they listen to much of anything without a text or a previous contextual association (film scores - oh, this is the part where....!)

Often those who are most attracted to music with text are the sort of listener who would not be attracted to most of the pop music they listen to -- nor would they remember the tune -- if it were not for the lyric: the lyric is is what they primarily hear. If it were 'just music' first - it would be readily forgettable or not sought out in the first place.

If you listen to 'just notes,' you are more an 'abstract' listener than many. Most people who listen to classical, with so much of it 'absolute' - no story, no text, no associative title, even, are 'abstract' listeners -- so are those who listen to the only other form I call 'non-pop,' i.e. jazz. These listeners use the same way of hearing for music which requires 'tracking' the interactivity of notes for it to make sense (non-literal) on its own. Absolute music is a nonverbal art, after all.


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