What happened to good lyricists?

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Maybe it's just me but lyrics seem to be vacuous recently. Every song I hear, it basically consists of "Ohh baby baby, I love you baby, love me baby, oooh oooh."
There was good old Simon and Garfunkel who knew how to write a song, and more recently the Milk Carton Kids earned their proverbial chops, but mainstream music? Ohh baby baby fluff. They all sound the same.
I suppose political / rebel songs went out of fashion, but content? That's not too much to ask.
Anyone know of some good lyricists? Recently I found this girl on YouTube --- > [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcFQ4UYUz7YpbbpLbMRq_dQ/videos?disable_polymer=1[/youtube]
( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcFQ4U ... _polymer=1 ) in case of embed screwups).
She does covers, but if the songs not specified as such as originals, she does ok for an amateur.

I agree that the mainstream music seems to be the same shallow song over and over again. There's a lot of them that I can't even tell apart from each other.
But this is just the songs that play on the radio. There are still a lot of great songwriters with great lyrics out there, you just have to look for them.
I don't want to give you any recommendations, as our idea of good lyrics might be very different. But I can recommend looking into Spotify. It's hard to find something new on youtube nowadays, as the recommended videos on the side are just repeating themselves now. But I've found Spotify to be a pretty good place to find new music. You can both look at "related artists" and "suggested songs", and just like with any other music service, a lot of it turns out to be the same boring songs again and again, but sometimes something really great turns up.
I've also found a few interesting bands through the "tiny desk concert" on youtube, but that might also be aimed at a pretty specific taste in music.

There are still plenty good lyricists out there. You're just looking in the wrong directions.

Radio music is meticulously written by big groups of rich men in suits; they adhere to a specific formula that is proven to sell well. It doesn't matter what the words are, because the song will be dead and forgotten in a matter of months.

Any small glimpse into the local music scene will show you that there are still plenty of people out there who are good lyricists, good writers, good singers, good musicians, etc. Sure, some of them are obviously just in it for money/fame/chicks/whatever, but others put their hearts and souls into their art. I like to think of myself as the latter.


To be fair, throwaway pop has been around for a very long time...people like Graham Gouldman, Tommy Roe, and Joey Levine were pumping out the bubblegum back in the '60s.

There's a British rapper called lowkey that I think writes some great lyrics. Political, rebel. I'd recommend the album cut of the song "revolution" as a starting point. He's got a lot of other stuff I like, too. I think he's amazing.
I don't usually listen to music with lyrics anymore, so not a lot to offer.

I think they realized that their chances of getting paid for their work is very slim, so they are doing other things to bring in income. Playboy magazine used to have very good articles because they had a reputation for paying their authors well.

Guess a lot of it depends on what you consider good lyrics. I mean, classic rock had its share of terrible lyrics too. The 80s were filled with mostly useless lyrics also across most genres.

I do agree with you though that based on what I consider good, there is very very little to choose from. I personally like lyrics involving real personal struggle and introspection.

You are also right that there is very little defiance or rebellion in music today. I listen to primarily obscure metal subgenres, and even in those, thoughtful, resistant lyrics are hard to find. Even there the focus has become shock value over quality expressions of feelings or individual thought.

I think this is just a reflection of society as a whole and just how compliant and weak it has become.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/enterta ... /95397738/
The four band members are Alumni of Rutgers University.

Social media and messaging on devices encourages non verbose, shortcut type writing

There are plenty of good lyricists, they just don't mostly exist in mainstream music.

I find most popular music with lyrics to be blah, blah, blah. It sounds all the same. Just type an artist and the song titles are all pretty much about the same thing. Such creativity and original thought. Not. It is all about making music that sells. The words popular, top and best put me off. Recently I was curious about popular music genres and after about a week of listening I have come to the conclusion that I am definitely going back to music that I actually like, even if it is not considered popular.