Do you find it hard to tell what a song is about?

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Even though I love music very, very much, I have no interest whatsoever in what the song is about. I seem to have a brain that is wired for music, not for words, that on the contrary seem to mean so much to others. If the lyrics are in a language accessible to me, it is annoying that I really can't pass them, when they are shoved in my face like that. The stuff people want to write into the world via music, isn't in my opinion really worth the space it takes.

Therefore I especially love instrumental music and music in languages I can't understand.

As above. Most song lyrics are abstract to some degree, so hard to interpret without looking deeper rather than just listening. I love music and don't feel the need to examine the meaning of songs too much.

As for TV programs or films, the content needs to suit me. If I don't find the plot believable or the delivery too slow then I rapidly lose interest.

Oh, sorry. I can never decipher what the lyrics are, so I have very little experience trying to decipher the meaning behind any lyrics. But when reading a song, I have trouble figuring out what it's trying to say.

All songs are about love.

Well I listen to a lot of black metal and related sub-genres and some death metal sort of stuff so the vocals can be hard to understand. Though after a while it becomes more clear, though sometimes I still look up what lyrics are before I start catching on.

Aside from that though I like quite a few bands that don't do vocals in english...and I am not a stickler on going up and looking up translations, but I still really enjoy the music. But yeah there is a band I like called Svartsot, who sings in swedish or some kind of old swedish and what they do sometimes is write an english description of what the song is about but they don't translate it to english because it doesn't translate all that well into exact english wording.

But yeah also I don't think lyrics are always that terribly important...sometimes its more how it flows with the music, and in metal its not uncommon to have unusual screams, growls, grunts and that kind of thing that aren't really 'words' but would still be considered metal vocals. But yeah a lot of times even if you catch a few words/phrases it will certainly clue you into the theme of the song....but understanding more extreme metal word for word can certainly be difficult.

I do when it's a song my brother likes. He thinks any song, poem, or artwork that makes actual sense to "average" people, including me, are worthless, and that he's superior in culture and intelligence for listening to "music" that has no rhythm, rhyme, and basically sounds like a thousand tin cans are being kicked down a rocky hill.

My brother was a hipster before it became cool.

Prior to the late 1970s/early 1980s, a fair number of top 30 chart songs in Britain and the USA were 'ballads', which had pretty straightforward 'stories'. Like this one for example.

These types of songs were subsequently driven out, first by Punk/New Wave, then by Rap and Dance music etc. I doubt whether there's much intelligible content in those, but I haven't been able to listen to chart music since about the mid 1980s.

I struggle with poetry too, and have never liked it because it makes no sense to me. If you have something oh-so-important to say, just say it, literally, plain and simple!

For me, I find that others express what I feel inside. Be it movie, TV or written words of any type.
When that happens, I take great comfort in finding something that allows me to use to express myself. My life is a repository of quotes, phrases snippets that I can parrot back to express myself.

And, then there are times I just do not get it at all. But, hey, if the rest works, then I can still enjoy it. It's sometimes nice to not have to worry about meaning and just let it be.

Wow, hadn't really thought about this, because I just assumed that all songs were supposed to be very ambiguous and that you'd have to know a lot about the artist's personal life etc to get what the songs are about! I mean, English is my second language, so I also assumed that was the reason, but even after having lived a few years in England and become fluent (most books I read are in English too), I still have no clue what songs are really about. For instance "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard" ... no clue. I was just thinking about milkshakes. I mean, I assumed it was about something else, because all songs are, but I didn't make the sexual link at all.

No. That's not true.

I'm only able to understand songs that are straight forward and to the point.

Originally, yes. Like when I was younger. I remember being shocked when I realized songs even had meanings and weren't a bunch of words set over a the background of music. I would even write some myself and they were just that: words with my imaginary music. Sometimes no aim and no meaning. Just trying to string words together.

Now, I write. I have trouble understanding the meaning of books other than there's action happening. It's harder for me to understand the them or main idea of some songs until I listen to them again or someone actually tells me.

Raspberry Beret is one of my favorite songs... No idea what it means.

Some songs are very specific and their meaning is super obvious, like I Was Gonna Cancel by Kylie Minogue.

Then there are times when I can actually feel the music. It's words, meanings, sounds, all colliding with my own feelings.

I even prefer to not know sometimes, like if there's some epic song that makes me feel sort of transcendent or whatever and then I learn what it's about and it loses its "magic". Sometimes I like to listen to Muse really loud and feel all doomsday-ish, I'm probably not going to try and find out what those songs are about because I'm afraid it'll be something really mundane, haha.

this is so pretentious i almost threw up a little



same here. alongside dark ambiance and some video game OSTs i particularly like múm's indecipherable vocals, pillowy sounds and electronic glitch, music in hebrew or coarse french, and grimes (geidi primes, genesis).


unless of course, they're about the struggles of eating out for dinner 21st century:

Lol. Now I'm curious. Out of curiosity does he ever mention what the kind of stuff he listens to is called? I would guess Drone, Ambient, Dark Ambient or Noise music.