One thing about Bob Dylan: he can write a song about pretty much anything, and make it fairly good. Even an Eskimo called Quinn. But not all songwriters have his talents. And yet so many of them continue to believe they have a golden touch that enables them to write about any subject under the sun with equal facility. There are certain subjects that reveal songwriting shortcomings. Generally, they tend to come when the songwriter feels the need to stretch out a bit, to reveal their hidden depths, by dealing with Big Issues. All too often, sadly, they simply reveal their hidden shallows.
The list below is a guide to some of the subjects that might best be avoided (there are others, such as The Mystical Power of the Native American, My Trip to Africa, My Trip to Asia, Why People Who Commute to Office Jobs Are Deluded Sheep, Why Monogamy Cannot Contain My Passion, but we’ll let them pass). That’s not to say there are no good songs about these subjects: there are, and there are some great ones. But they are outweighed by the catalogue of horrors. Please feel free to add your own unfit subjects for song to the list.
1. Your record label’s inadequacies
Why? It’s office politics. How often do you like hearing, in conversation with someone you don’t know, about what so-and-so’s manager did the other day, and how it completely ignored the planned campaign roll-out, and left the teller in a right nark?
Exhibit: Let’s get this one out of the way, because a load of you are going to claim this is one of the best songs ever written: you’re wrong. The Clash were meant to be a revolutionary force, guerillas with guitars, preaching the truth to The Kids. Their third single, Complete Control, opened with the lines: “They said, release Remote Control / But we didn’t want it on the label.” It continues with a complaint about the size of their guest lists on tour, then berates CBS for wanting to make money. Chaps, if you didn’t want the demands a major label brings, you shouldn’t have signed with one. And you didn’t have to stay there the rest of your career, while you did such dictated-by-the-man things as release a triple album named after Nicaraguan revolutionaries.
2. Old men who communicate their wisdom to you
Why? Is it a passing of the flame? When our young buck encounters a old man – and it’s almost always a man – how come said man is always wise, rather than a cantankerous fella demanding a seat on the bus? The tone, generally, is that of Uriah Heap’s Wise Man: “I sat before the wise man / In the autumn of my youth.” And the wise man usually conveys that there is still so much to learn. It’s boastful – look at my humility! – and sanctimonious.
Exhibit: Forever Changes by Love is one of my favourite albums. It’s almost perfect. And then it has Old Man. A song about – yes – an old man, who’d been everywhere in the world. He’d seen almost everything, too. And can you guess what kind of advice he gave? Yes, it was good.
3. Povertysplaining
Why? You are almost certainly richer than your listeners. They almost certainly encounter poverty more often than you, which is perhaps why you find it so shocking. They don’t need you to tell them what poor people look like.
Exhibit: Phil Collins has been unfairly criticised for many things, but Another Day in Paradise is not one of them. Criticism of that is manifestly fair. First, because literally everyone who has ever been to a city is aware of the problem of homelessness. Second, because he equates his material wealth with his listener’s by pointing out that both “you and me” are in paradise. Third, because he actually uses the phrase “think about it”. Praise be that he didn’t add a “yeah?” on the end.
4. Your children
Why? You’ve had children? Great. We’re happy for you. You love your child? Of course – but shouldn’t we take that for granted? There’s really no need to tell us, verse after endless verse.
Exhibit: Alicia Keys is at a brand new stage in her life, with a brand new feeling, after giving birth to her son. “There ain’t no man or prize / Oh no, can compare to you.” A child is more valuable than a Grammy. Good to know.
5. Other people’s children
Why? Do we really have to explain this one?
Exhibit: “I can see that you’re 15 years old,” sang Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones’ Stray Cat Blues. “You say you got a friend, that’s she’s wilder than you / Why don’t you bring her upstairs / If she’s so wild then she can join in, too.” That’s not sex, Mick, it’s sexual assault. They make her 16 years old when they play it now. That’s all right then.
6. Life on the road
Why? Second and third albums are replete with weary anthems about how hard it is playing 250 shows a year. And I’m sure it is: most normal people would start going slightly bonkers cooped up with the same people 24 hours a day for months on end, with just the hour on stage to release the tension. But the reason you don’t need to tell us about it is that every other band ever has already done so. You could spend 250 nights a year just listening to songs about life on the road, so spare us another one.
Exhibit: The saccharine ballad Beth by Kiss, sung by drummer Peter Criss, was an inexplicably huge breakthrough hit for the US glam rock band. Thing is, Beth, Peter can’t come home right now, “Because me and the boys are playing / And we just can’t find the sound.” There are plenty who would say that second line remains true, 40 years on.
7. Animals. Especially endangered animals
Why? It’s the even cutesier version of songs about your children. With added sanctimony, when said animals are endangered and you are pleading for their survival. And the animals are always either sweet, threatening or charismatic megafauna. Rarely do boring, functional animals get a look in.
Exhibit: How about Damon Albarn’s story of an elephant “with only this song to tell you how he feels”?
8. Why we could only have peace in strife-torn areas, if only we realised we’re all the same under the skin, yeah?
Why? When a musician successfully negotiates a peace treaty, we’ll remove this one from the list. Until then, your ability to analyse geopolitical conflicts in 200 words will remain in doubt.
Exhibit: Plenty of low-hanging fruit here, and I’m not above going for the obvious. So come on down, the Cranberries: “With their tanks and their bombs / And their bombs and their guns / In your head, in your head they are dying.”
9. Your tax bill
Why? You have to pay taxes? What, you? With your indescribable talent? Why, that’s a disgrace. No one should place that burden on you. You should leave it to we little people to do that.
Exhibit: I thought about Johnny Cash’s After Taxes – written by Billy Wheeler and Jerry Leiber – but there’s a fighting chance that one’s written from the perspective of the working stiff. Which brings us back, inevitably, to the song the Beatles should really have found an alternate lyric for. Rarely has the contrast between brilliant music and awful lyric been as grotesque as on Taxman.
10. Your reviews
Why? Like songs about your label, it’s a subset of songs about office politics, though it’s also a subset of the horrifically unappealing genre – too big to cover here, frankly – of songs about How Misunderstood I Am. But there’s something almost equally unappealing about songs complaining about your reviews: if this is the biggest thing you have to worry about, let’s swap problems. Right, I’ve got to go and write 1,200 words about the most horrible comments about my articles.
Exhibit: “Mr Writer,” suggested Kelly Jones of Stereophonics, “why don’t you tell it like it is?” Which rather ignored the possibility that telling it like it is was precisely what the writer had done.
