# Does it display a certain arrogance to print your lyrics in an album insert?



## Mesa (Mar 2, 2012)

I think this is a fine topic for open discussion.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

No more arrogance than is displayed by printing notes in a score, surely?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Are libretti for the audience an arrogance on the part of the opera composer? Surely not. It might mean the composer / lyricist actually thinks the lyrics are as important an element of the song-work as is the music (a general tenet about vocal works anyway), and want the listener to be certain of what they are.

I think when a lyric is being touted as 'poetry' that is more than a titch pretentious, as in that Paul McCartney lyric in the high school English text poetry anthology? Sorry, that's a lyric, not a poem. 
Heinrich Heine, set by Schubert, as self-standing poetry which was later set to music, that is still a poem. 

Slightly ambiguous, but not a real fine-haired distinction.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

I've noticed the trend of "the more self-consciously abstract the artist, the less likely they are to print the lyrics".


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

I don't think so, especially for ambiguous and easily misunderstood lyrics. It's nice to have an official source for the lyrics that we can point to and say, "See! I told you that's what he was saying!"


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

I would ask you WHY you might think it was such an arrogance. Please explain.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

In rock/pop I'd consider it desirable, especially if you sing like Tom Waits or Bjork. I gather Sgt. Pepper was the first album to have lyrics on the sleeve itself - I don't know whose idea it was but I thought it was a nice touch and encouraged a singalong vibe - as the footnote says, 'a splendid time is guaranteed for all'.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

Prefer lyrics printed too.

Especially for lyrics in Latin, French or German or any other language other than my native tongue. Also useful for those students of music who don't use the singer's native language.

Printing lyrics for Tom Waits and Bjork doesn't help. Both need elocution lessons.


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

I can't fathom why it would be considered arrogant.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Kopachris said:


> I don't think so, especially for ambiguous and easily misunderstood lyrics. It's nice to have an official source for the lyrics that we can point to and say, "See! I told you that's what he was saying!"


Except when they totally screw up the lyrics themselves!


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Perhaps it could be considered a little pretentious if an album contains the lyrics to just ONE song? Both The Doors and Led Zeppelin did this in visually flamboyant fashion with Celebration of the Lizard (of which only an excerpt was actually used on the record and renamed 'Not to Touch the Earth) and Stairway to Heaven respectively.


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