In 2012 I was a part of the coordinating team for Metanoia, the Tezpur University battle of the bands, and as a result I, along with the other two coordinators, spent most of the time worrying about stuff. There was a busted main line, due to a faulty cable, that threatened to end everything before it even began, a ruptured snare head that had to be replaced at the last moment before an early morning start (only possible thanks to the resourcefulness of fellow coordinator Rajkamal Sonowal) and people smoking on University grounds among other things. Of course, with the sheer talent and passion the bands brought to the stage, the end result was a rip roaring show and the satisfaction of a job well done made it worth all the little headaches.
The next year, with the burden of organizing the show on the able shoulders of my juniors, I decided I was going to have fun. Hang out with my best buddies and head bang like I just didn't care. The stage lay in the north east corner of the sports ground, facing roughly south, while the food stalls lined the west border, near the basketball courts. Standing here, at the stalls, you could enjoy the music and a plate of momos simultaneously (although, that is a practice frowned upon by most metalheads).
When around four or five band were done with their sets, and my neck was already a little strained, I decided to go have a little snack with a couple of friends, neither of them fans of metal. We had just received our plates of soggy, flimsy momos when a new band started their set. Right off the bat they had my attention. It was tight, straight forward death metal and the crowd was loving it.
"These guys are really good." I remarked, in response to which my friends turned and stared at the stage for a minute, mildly nodding their heads before one of them turned to me and complained that she couldn't understand a single word being sung. I told her death metal was not about the lyrics but about the overpowering nature of the music. The assault of the drums and bass, the push and pull of the guitar. There vocals were just another instrument. She didn't look convinced. How could the lyrics not matter? They were there for a reason. To her music had always been about the story told through it. She couldn't embrace the song unless it made sense to her.
That got me thinking. Was I listening to music the wrong way? I realised I didn't know the lyrics to a majority of the songs I liked. Songs I'd heard dozens of time without ever wondering what they were trying to tell me. There's this album called Jane Doe by Converge that I absolutely worship. I've heard it front to back many times, always with my eyes closed, and each time, the epic eleven minute closer fades away to leave me emotionally drained. I love the album. Life so often forces us into shells that its nice to have something that can pull us right out and make us feel. Thing is, I never understood a word frontman Kurt Ballou sang.
I guess I have always used his screams as a placeholder to project my own emotions into the music. My frustrations. My anger. My grief. That is probably why this album moves me so much. Because in my head it becomes about me. And this becomes possible only because it sounds like gibberish on the surface. Words rarely suffice in representing the rawest of feelings. It has to be a bestial scream. It makes no sense. But it makes me feel.
The same thing happened with the album Sunbather by Deafheaven. I listened to this album right after I'd finished Deadhouse Gates, a rather grim fantasy novel by Canadian author Steven Erikson, and in my mind the evocative atmosphere created by the music raised various touching scenes from the book. When I later tried to read up the lyrics for the songs I found that they made no sense to me. The songs were incredibly well written, but in my mind they had already come to mean something else. I simply could not place the words I was reading into the songs. I realised I wouldn't enjoy the songs that way and so I decided to discard the lyrics completely.
That brings to my mind a certain song by Pearl Jam. Alive. Lyrically this is one of the darkest songs Eddie Vedder's ever written. It is about a boy who learns from his mother that the man he'd always thought was his father was actually not. And his real father, who he'd never met, had died long ago. So when Vedder sings out repeatedly that he's still alive it is only bitter sarcasm. A lament at the burden that life had become for this person. The song is of course semi autobiographical and was, to a large extent, written by Vedder about his own inability to fully come to terms with learning the same hard truth about his father.
However, as anyone who has heard the song could tell you, it is simply impossible to listen to it and not feel uplifted. It seems more like an assurance that whatever it is you are going through, you can survive it, conquer it. And over the years Vedder realised that it was this sentiment fans responded to.
You can pick any concert footage of Pearl Jam playing this song and you will see the fans singing along with Vedder, arms raised and waving, no trace of bitterness on any of the faces. Fans have chosen to discard the original meaning of the song and turn the refrain of "I'm still alive" into something resoundingly positive.
Lyrics are an important part of a song. But it is not everything. And it definitely isn't final or binding. It is what an artist's own music means to them. You are free to have your own take on it. A song might mean something to the person who wrote it and something else entirely to another person listening. So the next time you cant make out what a singer is telling you don't immediately run to Google. Look inside yourself. You'd be surprised at what you find.
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