In Defense Of Bad Lyrics 

Support 12tone on Patreon to help us keep making cool videos! www.patreon.com/12tonevideos Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) Go watch Patrick's video! It's really good! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZStkUxC4iL4.html Also thanks to LowSpecGamer for lending me his voice for the Santayana quote! Check out his channel too! www.youtube.com/@LowSpecGamer 2) Songs used in this video, in order: -Court Of The Crimson King, by King Crimson -Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen -Dragula, by Rob Zombie -Scum Of The Earth, by Rob Zombie -Black Widow, by Children Of Bodom -Fire And Rain, by James Taylor -On A Plain, by Nirvana -Black Hole Sun, by Soundgarden -Fitzpleasure, by Alt-J -Come Together, by The Beatles -I Am The Walrus, by The Beatles -Losing My Religion, by REM -Blazing Arrow, by Blackalicious -One Week, by Barenaked Ladies -The Sound Of Silence, by Simon & Garfunkel -The Sound Of Silence, by Disturbed -You Oughta Know, by Alanis Morisette -The Alternative Polka, by Weird Al -The Call of Ktulu, by Metallica -Doctor My Eyes, by Jackson Browne -Black Summer, by Red Hot Chili Peppers -Bawitdaba, by Kid Rock -Puritania, by Dimmu Borgir -Take Me To The Pilot, by Elton John -Call Me Maybe, by Carly Rae Jepsen 3) Arguably, the dog in the next Dragula stanza _could_ be the same lifeform from the previous one, but that analysis falls pretty quickly if you consider any other lyrics in the song. Again, local meaning is possible (although strained) but consistent global meaning isn't. 4) As further evidence that Alexi Laiho is hard to understand, every lyric site I can find lists the words for the clip I played as "The fire's more right than my eyes" even though I'm like 99% sure it's actually "The fire's pouring through my eyes", partly because that's what it sounds like and partly because that's a more coherent sentence for a human being to write and then sing. Someone probably mistranscribed it early on, and that mistake has propagated because it's not obvious enough to detect. (Or I'm just wrong about what he's singing. That's technically possible, I suppose.) 5) I was intentionally a little lax with my other criteria when demonstrating songs that didn't quite qualify in some regard, because finding examples that fit exactly three out of four was very difficult. Sound Of Silence, especially, might fail on the grounds of worldbuilding, but having the two different well-known versions to compare in terms of maximalist aesthetic was too useful an opportunity to pass up. That said, in reality, all of these things exist on spectrums anyway. 6) In case this wasn't clear, when I said vibes lyrics were, in a sense, more musical, that "in a sense" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. There are plenty of ways of conceptualizing music that don't prioritize things like imagery, that was just a useful inroad to the argument I wanted to make. 7) Also, in case you were wondering, that Santayana essay is called "Egotism In German Philosophy" and you can find the quote here: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Egotism_in_German_Philosophy/Chapter_XV 8) It's worth noting on Bawitdaba that, once other lyrics do come in, they aren't particularly close to counting as vibes lyrics. They're pretty standard from the perspective of meaning. 9) Of the songs I did count, Puritania is probably the most controversial inclusion, because it does have some gestures toward an apocalyptic narrative, but it's so inconsistent and unclear on the shape of that apocalypse that I view it as falling under the "consistent theme" umbrella more than any sort of actual worldbuilding. Again, feel free to disagree, it's all made up anyway. 10) To be clear, I chose intentionally to not discuss the influence of drug use on the artists who wrote these lyrics, because "This is weird so the artist must have been on drugs" is, to my mind, a pretty lazy analysis. Many of them probably were, but given that many musicians who wrote relatively coherent lyrics _also_ did a lot of drugs, the causal link is tenuous at best, and "The artist made an artistic choice" remains a more insightful framework.

I'd disagree that Sound of Silence could be considered as having "vibes lyrics" in any way. The imagery is abstract, sure, but it absolutely tells a story of a vision had about modernity becoming a religion, the isolating nature of capitalism, and the vital importance of maintaining connections as a community, rather than a collection of individuals. It's more akin to "All Along the Watchtower" than "By the Way"

Great video but I dispute the claim that bob dylan never could’ve written the line “a bullet hole in your fist” I present my evidence: “he just smoked my eyelids and punched my cigarette”

Even mentioning Sound of Silence seems odd, as it is a song that, while esoteric, definitely has both narrative continuity and an underlying meaning.

I still stand by "rah rah ra a ah / ro ma ro ma ma / ga ga ooh la la" as one of the most inspired pop song lyrics to come out in the past decade and a half. PURE vibes. I am feeling EXACTLY the emotion that lady stefani "gaga" germanotta wants me to feel and last i checked, that's what every piece of art strives to accomplish

I am the Eggman.

Your Weird Al example gave me a chuckle. It's the End of the World as We Know It by R.E.M. comes to mind. The chaos of the verses fits with the theme of the chorus, but it's still a lot of disconnected chaos.

I am legitimately shocked that Beck's "Loser" didn't get mentioned in the video. You started describing the concept, and the whole time I'm sitting here nodding and saying to myself "yeah, like Loser. When's he gonna mention Loser?!" 😂 I feel like that's the ultimate vibes lyrics song.

I remember reading something about Nile Rodgers' songwriting process where he said, even if the lyrics aren't particularly deep or brainy, they have to be ABOUT something. For example, "Good Times": there's kind of a theme to it (it's reappropriating post-prohibition songs and language for the late '70s), but it's largely there to create a mood, and that mood is "Things were bad for a while but now they're good, so let's have fun!" A more recent example that comes to my mind is "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO. Again, not deep, philosophical lyrics, nor are they ones that tell a linear story, but you know exactly what feeling they're trying to evoke: it's a party, we're rocking at the party, and having fun while rocking at the party. I also remember an interview with Redfoo where he basically echoed Nile Rodgers' philosophy, that yes, the lyrics are simple, but the choice of words still matter. I'm also reminded of "I Want It That Way" and "Backstreet's Back," which are vaguely cool or emotional phrases strung together to evoke a particular feeling, In those cases, it's because the guy who wrote them isn't a native English speaker (which would also explain a LOT of Europop lyrics).

There is a whole Japanese genre of modern music called "denpa" songs (the term itself is a long story about electromagnetic waves affecting people in weird ways). It's often fast, bright, intensely cute anime-style songs with mostly rapid, nonsensical lyrics that fill the "canvas" of the song with human-like sounds. Those can be sound markers that invoke certain associations (including culture-specific terms), but primarily, they are there to convey a feeling of the song more directly and freely than a thoughtful explanation would. It's a fascinating genre, so if you are open to really different experiences - give them a go!

"Ameno" is an interesting song to think about in this context. It uses words that sound like latin that are just gibberish. To most people, we can't tell the difference between fake and real latin, so they just used sounds that fit together in a way that creates a mood that they want. However, because they arent real words, theres no imagery outside of the sound cliches themselves. What do you guys think?

Calling Rob Zombie "Robert" killed me. Makes me imagine Robert Zombie is written on his driver's license.

"And that's the key to understanding this song. Rob Zombie... is a dog." I'm shooken

They Might Be Giants have a lot of lyrics that might fit into this category, although I feel like a lot of their songs also have an intended literal meaning which just goes over some people’s heads

Dragula is based on an episode of The Munsters, where Grandpa (a vampire) entered a drag race with a custom-built race car. The imagery is abstract, it's vaguely describing someone very competitive and determined to win, using imagery of violence symbolically. Lime in the Coconut technically has a narrative, but the lyrics were chosen for their aesthetics, not their semantics.

I think vibes lyrics are more cross-genre than your definition might present. Intensity and over-the-top coolness seems to be the type that you're most familiar with. The vibes I'm most often interested in are chill, and I think lyrics can help with that.

The Sound of Silence tells a very clear story.

Noel Gallagher is a great example of beautiful nonsense lyrics that sound great and Noel Gallagher himself admits that he only does that kind of line because it fits the melody and it sounds cool. Like “slowly walking down the hall faster than a cannonball”.

I think you unintentionally explained to me why I don't learn lyrics quickly and often don't listen to them at all, as if every song was instrumental. I grew up on all the examples you played, including the ones that were "nonsense but not vibes" and the other exclusions. Vocals were just another instrument that sounded cool.

This seems deeply related to appreciation of music in other languages. When I'm jamming to a Babymetal song, even if I have once looked up the lyrics, I'm just absorbing the vibes when I actually listen to the song.

Beck's "Odelay" is a master class in vibe lyrcs.

I think this is a great video, and makes a great point, but throughout the entire thing I was trying to work out why I disagree whilst also nodding along, and you finally said something that made it click in my head. "They aren't asking to be understood." This is the vibe I was getting from the video and what my mind was disagreeing with from a basal part of itself. I feel like these lyrics are screaming to be understood, but in the same way a metaphor would be understood - the meaning isn't in the meaning of the individual words, but rather in the image that the entire phrase is painting. This disagreement really sprung up with the sound of silence, which I think is heavily painting a story throughout the entire song. It might be (probably is) a different story for every person, but that's the point - it is a song about sorrow, darkness, depression and how the lack of communication inspired by those feelings deepen it even more. The 'sound' is like a deafening silence, an anti-sound if you will. It could reference the JFK assassination, 9/11, a personal dark time, etc. depending on the person. I agree that it they are vibe lyrics, and I agree with this entire video more or less, but I can't help but disagree with your personal definition of vibe lyrics. Which is a really weird situation, but I think one that sits well here, because the point of these songs is to target something deeper than a complex story or message could convey. It's putting into words something that can't be put into words. They're so universal because they don't have one concrete meaning, they have hundreds, but each of them should be considered as intentional, because the song was constructed to convey such overlapping concepts such as emotions and humanity.

Oh! Oh! Several Talking Heads songs do this! "Burning Down the House" is a great example. It's just a series of phrases that work well together in the Heads' attempt at a Funkadelic pastiche.

I’m a bit baffled that you ever considered Losing My Religion’s lyrics for this category. It’s not meaningless in any way- it’s a song about unrequited love, how it drowns you in painfully obsessive thoughts that bounce between feeble hope and utter despair. How you fear making a fool of yourself by letting slip how you feel, even as you know that’s your only chance of having those feelings reciprocated.

Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum. One of the classics from the 60's. The words almost sound like they're saying something and really aren't at all.

I can't even count how many people have told me they don't really listen to lyrics anyway. That's mind-boggling to me personally but I guess everybody experiences music in their own way. I like trying to listen to each part as well as the piece as a whole.

My dad was a fan of Yes in part because he didn't have to over-listen to the lyrics. Not all of them, but I think Close to the Edge is a perfect example.

Dance Gavin Dance’s scream vocalist, Jon Mess, is a fantastic example of these vibe lyrics. Highly recommend for anyone looking to explore this in a pop-punk setting.

two words: bill wurtz. all of his songs are inherently based on vibes and give the impression of meaningfulness without meaning.

Talking Heads "Speaking in Tongues" album is an excellent exercise in using the sounds of words and vibes without imparting literal meaning.

Damnit. I was hoping for an "I Am The Walrus" breakdown

I always thought of this type of music as poetry music. Poetry doesn't have to make sense in its wording, it needs to make sense in its feeling. The images it creates need to make you feel what the poet is feeling. Those types of poems with "nonsense" lines express those emotions like nothing else can. You don't get caught in the story and held down by trying to interpret it. You get flashes of images and feelings that blend into one another and flow like emotions do in real life. Sometimes it has to be nonsense for the words to carry the weight of the meaning. You can just take a line like "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" and write the meaning out in plain speech and get the same feeling from it. Same with vibe music. You can't get those feels across with the same depth as you can when the lyrics speak like poetry. "Nonsense" lyrics paired with music can set a scene in your head that could never exist in real life. You can't explain true love. You can't explain true pain or sadness. But you can put together tiny pieces that flow into each other and produce those feelings where nothing else can.

Beck's "Sexx Laws" is great example of this style, with nearly every line being a phrase which sounds awesome (I mean just listen to the first line), but mostly that same thought is only carried for a few lines at a time, meanwhile these words that just perfectly fit your ear are underpinned by a triumphant, climbing melody sounding out on trumpets, with a complex layer of bass underneath that, a keyboard adding some high punctuation to the lines, and, weirdly, a banjo that you only really notice once everything above it drops out.

I am the walrus is a great song precisely because of how deliberately odd everything is including the lyrics

Gotta be one of the greatest set of vibes lyrics is System of a Downs Vicinity of Obscenities. "banana banana banana terracotta banana terracotta terracotta pie" followed directly by "Is there a perfect way of holding your baby?"

Can't believe no one said this yet, but to me, the king of "vibes music" is U2. You always know *exactly* how to feel about a song ("With or Without You" is longing and frustration, "City of Blinding Lights" waffles between endless lostness and eternal hope, "New Year's Day" is tension, "Vertigo" is excitement), and sometimes there's one powerful line that we gravitate towards. And maybe it's just me, but any time I've tried to go hunting for specific meaning, I've been thwarted by researching 9999 different interpretations or finding a "coherent" narrative that falls apart literally one line later. Really loved this video and it made me think really differently about listening to music.

I think RHCP do this really well, all of there songs are extremely captivating sonically and always get you to sing along even though most of the lyrics don’t make sense when you try to think about them as one cohesive story

I remember doing an exercise in high school where we analyzed song lyrics like poems. We got to pick songs and I chose Metallica’s Enter Sandman. I thought I was honestly just bad at literary analysis but looking at the lyrics now, they really are just cool and spooky sounding, not necessarily full of meaning or telling a story.

I waited for At The Drive-In. And I waited. In isolation, every snippet is an incredible image or an off-kilter metaphor; taken as a whole, they mean basically nothing to me. But goddamn if Cedric Bixler-Zavala doesn't sing them with a conviction that makes you feel like they're vital information.

Sounds of silence has a clear and deliberate story

You know how something instantly and surprisingly clicks? Well, that happened to me here. This concept of using words for their coolness and how they fit the vibe and emotions of a song - it’s almost a relief. It’s a realization of: this is how to describe a lot of music I like. I’ve never had words (groans) to fit this concept before. My brain shuts off whenever I have to listen to words in a poetry-like format. I have to force myself to pay attention to lyrics in musicals or i completely miss what they are singing about. I sang in a children’s chorus for years, memorized hundreds of song lyrics, but could I really give you a detailed description about what the song was about? In most cases, not really. But I do hear words and phrases. So to have someone describe to me how there are some songs where the words are there to enhance and emphasize the awesomeness of music rather than tell me about something, is a massive revelation. Plus I tend to just like the overall sounds of the pieces with vibes lyrics rather than, say, a ballad. So thank you!

This feels like it applies to my favorite band Angels & Airwaves. Tom DeLonge often writes lyrics that are vaguely epic, passionate, or dreamlike, but when you actually dig into it, there isn’t really anything super specific being said, rather an emotion being invoked. And very effectively in my opinion! It’s like Chris Nolan said (and also the quote from Tenet), “don’t try to understand it, just feel it.”

I've noticed that a lot of modern drum n bass songs have this kind of vibe lyrics where they just dump a bunch of impressive sounding words related to space on you usually in third person as if their interplanetary trip is a shared experience they're having with the whole crowd of the rave they would be playing it at. Sometimes my brain suddenly becomes hyper aware of this as I am listening and that can turn the experience from an epic one into a really silly one in a split second and I think that's kind of a shame.

There are two examples of vibes lyrics that always come to mind for me, Brian Eno and Jon Anderson from Yes. Because they both spoke in interviews about how their writing process starts by singing nonsense sounds and turning it into words from there.

I think that a lot of Tall Hall and earlier Lemon Demon songs do fit quite nicely in this category (I find "Taken For a Ride" and "Sky Is Not Blue" are good examples of them), though a lot of them are frequently made more in a comedic tone and fall into the more tongue-in-cheek thing mentioned in the video, especially for Lemon Demon

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but prisencolinensinainciusol is a great example of a vibes song, as that was literally the point. It was written by an Italian artist to sound like English, while not being so. It's believed he did this because he thought that Italians would vibe (pun intended) with whatever sounds good, even if they couldn't understand it

i love that you called rob zombie robert thats so funny for some reason

I'd like to nominate Tally Hall's Turn the Lights Off for my favorite example of vibes lyrics; they're _just_ coherent enough to suggest _something_ but are still broad enough not to be very specific on what that something is

The 'Hopelandic' used by Sigur Ros is an excellent example. Switching between their natural language and phonemes that 'just feel right' for the music, not only allows international listeners to feel included in the musical process (we understand you don't speak Icelandic) but also gives native speakers another level of intimacy with the songs.

4:04 love the Nethack/Rogue reference there

This is a good chunk of what makes Sonic music with lyrics so great

I think this counts: Don't Let's Start by They Might Be Giants. Their lyrics are usually pretty silly across the board but still have pretty great storytelling and a specific concept they're going for (Ana Ng is my favorite example of their songwriting) but I'm pretty sure Don't Let's Start doesn't have any specific meaning. Either way it perfectly captures a sort of cat-like, hyperactive energy with occasional hatred of life thrown in randomly. Also I totally agree with the concept of engaging with art on its own level, you worded something I've been thinking for a while!

"The Sound of Silence" is pretty obviously about social fragmentation and isolation in a capitalist society. I mean, the line you chose to highlight ("the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made") is probably one of the most pointed lines in the whole song and about as far from "just vibes" lyrics as it gets.

I have to say, this is freeing to hear. I've been taught to believe all these cryptic lyrics always add up to some deep overall meaning that I'm failing to get (usually with a cop-out for why it can't be explained to me), but if they're just creating images to evoke emotion and not describing something concrete to the whole song, that's good and I can appreciate that. There are some, like Smoke on the Water, where I actually don't get it because I don't understand the lingo, in-jokes and references, and that one in particular I just accepted in the same "I'll never get it" pile as Dragula until your previous video. It would be nice to know going in if I'm supposed to be listening for a ballad, grafting imagery into a picture of an emotion, or just feeling the vibe, but the vibe is always there or it isn't really connecting emotionally with me (emotional language is not universal as I think you've mentioned before). And even that is something that can change with experience - I didn't feel anything from "Gangasta's Paradise", for example, for many years until I gradually learned the emotional language it used from similar music that was closer to my experience. As a side note, though - Logical inconsistencies in the plot ARE bad because they take the audience out of the experience. To put it in music terms, it's like Rob Zombie stops for a few seconds in the middle of his song for a coughing fit and just leaves that in the version that gets published. It's totally human that he had to cough, but if it's not intentional and just breaks the flow, it's not good musical production. And not bothering to make your plot make sense when you're constructing a story for people to follow is bad story production. You can make a movie where a logical inconsistency gets passed by so quickly while more important things are happening that it keeps the flow going and doesn't let you linger on the screwup and that's fine (like a musician missing a note and keeping playing) but we're usually not complaining about that when we talk about plot holes. We're talking specifically about when it failed so hard at keeping the story going that it took us out of the experience. There aren't many people upset that the Back to the Future franchise was logically inconsistent because when things like the lightning-struck DeLorean hovering mid-air without going 88mph happen, there's an emotional punch and a moving story beat to keep you from being taken out of it. Yes, ScreenRant and others are going to nitpick them afterward, but as "look what you missed" clickbait, not criticism. But when a female lead doesn't even TRY to get the male lead onto a giant floating door while he's freezing in the north Atlantic after a shipwreck, it takes you out of the moment. You can try to justify it with physics of the door's buoyancy, but the characters obviously didn't know that but did know the door was big enough in the moment we were seeing it on screen, and even Cameron admitted it was because the script required Jack to die. The feeling of frustration that the characters didn't do the obvious thing anyone would do in that situation undercut the feeling of loss we were supposed to get from that scene and instead a lot of us snorted in laughter when Jack sank beneath the water. Largely because we were allowed to sit with the scene long enough to realize something was wrong long before Jack died. That doesn't invalidate your unironic enjoyment of a badly written movie, but your enjoyment doesn't invalidate our experience of being taken out of it by bad writing either. It also doesn't make it good writing. There is also an in-between where something ruins a story for people with knowledge but is fine if you're ignorant of the subject. ANY story that hung on the "10% of your brain" myth, Inception's magically getting more processing power to run simulated realities faster the MORE you emulated reality inside the brain rather than the other way around, every time they mentioned "quantum" in Avengers Endgame, etc. It's easy enough to turn off the brain when Michael Bay makes a C4 explosion with gasoline to get a cool fireball instead of a high velocity shockwave, but it's a bit harder when the supposed genius scientist character tells you something as obviously dumb as claiming the oblate spheroid under your feet is flat, it's hard to keep taking the story seriously.

I feel like foreign language songs that cross over can often unintentionally become "vibes songs" especially if they have some English (in the US) in them or the culture has a limited knowledge of the language. I think the big example of this is Psy's Gangnam Style. That is a song that did have a real meaning, but unless you both knew Korean and were familiar with South Korean culture you had very little chance of picking up what it was. But it was still really popular because of the vibe it had.

I can't believe you went this whole video without mentioning Beck. My time is a piece of wax, fallen on a termite that's choking on the splinters. Anyways, great video!

i feel like quite a few of the songs from patricia taxxon’s “the flowers of robert mapplethorpe” might fit this idea. the first time i and a lot of others i know listened to it, for a lot of it the meaning was indecipherable, but the emotions came through forcefully clear. and while some of these are narratives that are just written with convoluted language, other songs really are just vibes given words! while i find it really fun to sit down and try and find what i feel like the meaning is, individual lines don’t really come into this, moreso just the general feeling they evoke IM FRESH GOT MINUTES IN THE GREENLIGHT BADUM TISH HOT FIGURES WITH A LEAN BITE GIRLS GOTRA FIGHT. GIRL’S ON SIGHT GOT A HUNDO MAKING CARAMILLO DYNAMITE

I think "All Apologies" is a fantastic example of this. When Kurtd says "What else can I say, everyone is gay". I don't think he is trying to say anything about the complexities of human sexual expression. But man oh man that lyric grabs you. And then when he says "I'll take all the blame, aqua sea foam shave" He is not talking about shaving, or cutting things so close that there is nothing left, nor is he playing coy by throwing meaninglessness at us, because it really feels like he means something. ANd that really comes across when you hit the chorus "In the sun, in the sun I feel as one. Married. Buried". That line hits hard, but I don't really know what it means. ANd I don't think I am supposed to. It just feels meaningful. So thanks for pointing out this new perspective on lyrics.

There's also that Japanese song writer who uses a mishmash of Japanese, Latin and just sounds specifically to have a chorus that vibes really good. I don't remember her name at the moment, to my chagrin.

Thank you for this. Skinny Puppy would be a good example of this especially songs like Assimilate, Deep Down Trauma Hounds, and Human Decease (S.K.U.M.M).

I once wrote a song as a kid where I repeatedly chanted "Get the magnet" because it sounds cool, despite not making any sense.

my favorite vibes lyrics are "can you picture that" by dr. teeth and the electric mayhem. the entire soundtrack of the muppet movie (1979) did not need to go that hard but no lyrics will ever be better than "i lost my heart in texas, northern lights affects us, i keep it underneath my hat / aurora borealis shinin' down in dallas, can you picture that?" it means absolutely nothing but the vibes are unmatched. the song is literally just vibes.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe

Sound of silence and losing my religion are very meaningful, they are based mostly on vibes but they were written with intent.

I've always described "vibes lyrics" as lyrics that contribute to the _feeling_ of the song rather than the _meaning._ In that sense, you can think of them as being more like a musical instrument than lyrics. It's a lyrical style I've come to appreciate a lot more in recent years. I think a lot of shoegaze lyrics would fall under that category. Being a genre that is all about aesthetics, you would expect the lyrics to enhance the music rather than have a meaning meant to be taken at face value. Trying to find any actual meaning in shoegaze songs can be extremely difficult.

Sigur Ros took it to the next level with their "Hopelandic" language. It's just syllables that sound like they _could_ be Icelandic, but aren't actual words. The vocalizations are part of the musical landscape, but I guess words just wouldn't suffice.

No love for Bob Dylan? I was thinking of "it's alright ma" the whole video. Not to mention "desolation row", "subterranean homesick blues", and "do ya, mr. Jones?" Great video as always! I love when you get philosophical.

I love your videos so much, man, they're probably my biggest musical inspiration and they're just fun to watch. Your opinions mean a lot to me and really influence how I think about music. That's all, thank you for making these videos. They mean a lot to me.

Tori Amos comes to mind. Feelings. Minimal narrative. Definite musical quality to the performance. The angry harpsichord era.

"I didn't understand the lyrics. Therefore they have no meaning." "I was stone and he was wax so he could scream and still relax. Unbelievable. And we frightened the small children away."

I remember watching an interview with Will Wood a while ago, and he was talking about his song Red Moon. After talking about some of the thoughts that inspired it, he also said how some parts were him just experimenting with imagery, "playing with colors" as he described it, and compared it to an abstract painting. I think that has a lot to do with the idea of this video, that lyrics don't need to have a narrative or specific idea behind them to be meaningful, but that you can experiment with language and imagery to still create really powerful.

The part I was left unconvinced, was about how vibe songs need to go strong on the instruments. There are many vibe songs that go with a calm, stressed, or loss vibes, "bailando con mi virginidad" by porter(yeah it's in spanish, but it's the best example i could think of)

Someone once said that music is how we decorate time. If that's the case, your "vibes" lyrics would be a kind of collage. A selection of words and tones, out of context, to form a larger image, perhaps abstract, perhaps concrete. To take a couple of your examples. "bullet hole through your fist," We have a couple pieces cut from the cloth of human violence, put together because they are a color. "The people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made" looks like a complete picture from a grammatical eye but it's formed from two different colors, the artificiallity a physical thing against spiritual behavior. Also, Kiki and Bouba have a lot going on here too.

Sundial by Lemon Demon, absolute vibe lyrics perfection “ somehow something to set my sundial backwards tilted and upside down No the shadow in this point in time right out of town” “I don’t remember what it is that I just said to you i’ve got Anubis on my back and something in my shoe don’t walk backwards don’t be jealous you’re so bloody overzealous” And then, at the very end, the song calls itself out “don’t walk forwards don’t be silly you’re the heel call Achilles Don’t enjoy this private screening this one doesn’t have a meaning” Literally, none of this song makes any sense whatsoever and yet people try to interpret it and read it into it and you can kind of sort of read a story out of it but that’s not the point because the story just really does not make any fucking sense, there’s no story there’s no meaning, just vibes that sound really fucking poetic and a little bit goofy but it’s amazing It’s not really tongue and cheek about it either, and it seems to be a weird level of sincerity in the meaninglessness of it, I can imagine Neil was trying to come up with lyrics for a song, but couldn’t and ultimately just said things that sounded deep, but just didn’t have any meaning behind them and he might’ve been depressed at the time so there might’ve been a bit of frustration behind them, which you can almost kind of here in The “This one doesn’t have a meaning” lyrics and lyrics are just really cool and smart and clever while meaning nothing at all

I love this video so much. It brought back so much I love about music and enhanced my love of it. "Idioteque" by Radiohead is a really interesting example of "vibes lyrics" that I love. The generally apocalyptic feel of the individual lines fits so well with the instrumental behind it. Each line makes no sense individually or with each other, but if you take them as a "vibe," it makes total sense. As a broad idea, I actually think hip-hop fits this in some ways. Obviously there are coherent stories in hip-hop, but even when it is this way, the sound of the words often tells more of a story than the words themselves. I often find when I read hip-hop lyrics, the impact is nowhere near as great as when I hear them in a song. When Mobb Deep say "my gunshots will make you levitate," on a record, you feel like you're in a dark alley being followed and about to get shot. On the page, it doesn't have anything like the same impact.

A classic vibes lyric: "Tin roof....*rusted*!" (from "Love Shack")

I feel like Jon Anderson from Yes is a prime example of lyrics that “suck” in that they don’t really make any sense. But musically the words fit perfectly with the song and the vocals are treated kind of like their own instrument. Close to the Edge is a great example of this.

12tone! Responding to your request for vibes lyrics in other genres, Underworld (of Born Slippy fame) are essentially the masters of such in the British electronic dance scene. I think they usually refer to it as "stream of consciousness lyrics", though. Lots of words that often mean notbing on their own but add a *lot* to the vibe. I think the aforementioned Born Slippy, but also Push Upstairs and Bruce Lee are the most obvious examples from their discography.

I love this video, goo goo G'joob!! also, Yellow Ledbetter is THE example of "vibes lyrics", there's not even an official lyrics version - Eddie Vedder just makes vaguely word-shaped sounds dripping and oozing with feeling and he SELLS IT.

This video was making me think, as videos about music often do, about Pink Floyd. Most of their songs are not vibe songs, as they're well known for their concept albums and such, but one I can think of can be absolutely seen as a vibe song: "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun". It sounds meaningful overall, but it's really random lines from Poems of the Late T'ang. However, the vibe is distinct, and when you're listening you do feel like there's something being said, but you can't put your finger on what he's trying to say. Also notable as the only studio version of any of their songs featuring all five band members. Sure, I'd be hard-pressed to be able to distinguish which guitar is Barrett's and which is Gilmour's, but that's just how it is, especially since the former was deteriorating and the latter had some time to go before he truly came into his own.

What a fantastic video! I admit I was listening to Steely Dan when I started your video. Geeze, those guys really understood Vibe Lyrics. Great presentation and explanation of something that most people don't even think about. I was one of those ppl always trying to find out what was the meaning or symbolism behind the lyrics was.... when the real answer was "Who f-ing cares? Just enjoy the experience of listening to it!"

the idea of “vibes lyrics” I think explains exactly why i like Miracle Musical. in my mind, it checks every box i can think of from this video: a group that minimalizes lyrical meaning in favor of intense vibes as someone who has trouble understanding lyrics just by listening i resonate really well with vibes lyrics and am incredibly grateful that you put this concept into words. ty ❤

The most "vibesy" set of lyrics for me will always be "A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido". Every single word is nothing but a gut punch of barely articulate alienated intensity and I love it

Beck's "Loser" is the ultimate vibe song.

I know it's your own definition, but I'd personally not have limited "vibes lyrics" with a lot of the extra stuff you added in. A chill, simplistic song would still fit a certain "vibe", after all, so I don't see why meaningless lyrics designed to go with that that wouldn't qualify. And good point about meaninglessness in art being such a stigma nowadays!

I feel like The KLF fits this rather well. What words are there, they’re kinda in on “the joke” … I guess. But they are absolutely delivered with conviction!! Especially with Extreme Noise Terror playing 3AM Eternal, really pushes that whole vibes lyrics idea.

I think a lot of EDM has vibes lyrics. Tropic Love by Diviners is one of my favourites: “I remember the ocean Memories die out so hard We were travelling mountains Just to find the loudest seas We settled down by the fire Knowing we could aim higher But we didn’t know that yet So if you want something to hold on to Gotta find it first But here I am ‘Cause I’ve been laying under palm trees Waiting for the summer Knowing there’s nowhere to go ‘Cause I am happy on this island Wanna be my funland? I don’t ever want to leave I’m in a tropic love”

your videos are so well reasoned and insightful, they always make me think about art in new ways. you consistently do a really good job of showing the value and appeal of stuff i might have written off as undesirable.

You think Bohemian Rhapsody has a narrative? I thought for sure it would be the definitive example of a vibe song. All vibes, no meaning. Wait, you think Sounds of Silence has less of a narrative than Bohemian Rhapsody? What?

I disagree with some of your counterexamples. Vibes aren't always good or high energy, you can have sad, pensive, regretful vibes, which I think losing my religion and the sound of silence fall under.

King of Pain by the Police. There's a king on a throne with his eyes torn out There's a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt There's a rich man sleeping on a golden bed There's a skeleton choking on a crust of bread

Great video! I was waiting for you to bring up Duran Duran (because you already covered "Hungry Like the Wolf" in another video). Their lyrics often verge into the vibes zone for me. For example, "Out on the tar plains, the glides are moving/ All looking for a new place to drive" from "The Chauffeur" has little meaning but plenty of feeling. In terms of newer pop music, I wonder if Max Martin hasn't accidentally contributed to this genre with his particular style of awkward English grammar. "Hit me baby one more time" indeed 🙂

The absolute entirety of The Mars Volta's Deloused In The Comatorium album. Vibes from start to finish. Brilliantly executed.

I've always felt that Stairway To Heaven lyrics don't really say anything. Just a collection of lines that sound cool.

just wanted to take a second to say hi, i noticed the rogue illustration, i appreciated it. love how many little references you manage to fit into the illustrations anyways my favorite vibe lyrics come from Architect's "Giving Blood": Your salvation's a letdown / Oh, I'm sorry that I'd rather feel / I'd rather feel alive

voices as instruments! my favourite example is the majority of daft punk songs as they are committed to making a sound just by the use of the voice

I love how he talks about lyrics, which is like the most important part of making music. But is never talked about somehow

A quick look into the Dadaist artistic movement (it's primarily a VISUAL art movement) might be a worthwhile exercise for you, or anyone who wants to get deeper into this idea. All about the synthesis of word, meaning and art

Ive been waiting for you to make this video for too long! So glad you finally made it!!

I think that you find a lot of vibes music in jam band music, especially by the Grateful Dead or Phish. Certainly a decent amount of their libraries tells tales and makes sense, but their more psychedelic stuff goes more for creating a vibe and painting mental impressions - musical impressionism in a way.