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music or lyrics - and what IS music anyhoo?
Someone (hi, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jsmitty_o) recently said something about being either a lyrics person or a music person. My first impulse is to say that I am a music person. Proofs abound. I like a lot of jazz and classical music that is utterly lyric-less. I do like some jazz vocals but tend to prefer instrumentals. Classical vocals [i.e., opera] almost always drives me bats. So: music.
I also assume this has something to do with why I can derive so much pleasure from jpop, even though it's almost exclusively vocal - if I was a lyrics person it'd really bug me that I “don't know what they're saying” [a complaint I often hear from jpop non-fans]. But recently I noticed something even further:
I have a few examples of jpop artists who have recorded in both Japanese and English - in some cases, the same song recorded in two versions. The backing instrumental is identical. The voice singing is identical. The only difference is the language of the vocals.
And in pretty much every case, I prefer the Japanese version.
When the lyrics are in English, I notice them. (Especially when they're not brilliant, which is pretty standard for pop music.) The lyrics distract me from enjoying the music as fully as I'm used to. More to the point, I realize now that the actual sound of the Japanese language itself is a kind of music for me and I miss it when it's not there. So that definitely makes me a music person, I guess, dunnit? How bout that. Huh.
jsmitty_o) recently said something about being either a lyrics person or a music person. My first impulse is to say that I am a music person. Proofs abound. I like a lot of jazz and classical music that is utterly lyric-less. I do like some jazz vocals but tend to prefer instrumentals. Classical vocals [i.e., opera] almost always drives me bats. So: music. I also assume this has something to do with why I can derive so much pleasure from jpop, even though it's almost exclusively vocal - if I was a lyrics person it'd really bug me that I “don't know what they're saying” [a complaint I often hear from jpop non-fans]. But recently I noticed something even further:
I have a few examples of jpop artists who have recorded in both Japanese and English - in some cases, the same song recorded in two versions. The backing instrumental is identical. The voice singing is identical. The only difference is the language of the vocals.
And in pretty much every case, I prefer the Japanese version.
When the lyrics are in English, I notice them. (Especially when they're not brilliant, which is pretty standard for pop music.) The lyrics distract me from enjoying the music as fully as I'm used to. More to the point, I realize now that the actual sound of the Japanese language itself is a kind of music for me and I miss it when it's not there. So that definitely makes me a music person, I guess, dunnit? How bout that. Huh.