While they aren’t generally stylistically complex, some songs with complex nonsense lyrics seem, at least to me as a young American, to be the ones that are simultaneously easiest to appreciate for a great many people, and also have huge staying power, despite being quite old. For example:
American Pie
Hotel California
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Don’t Stop Believing
Bohemian Rhapsody (or, really, most things by Queen)
These, at least among the places I’ve been here in America, are the ones to which everyone in the bar starts singing along.
Sure, these have underlying meaning, or make references to specific events, but in my experience, most of the people I hear singing and dancing to these have no idea what they’re referencing, and often don’t even know the words. Perhaps it is simply that they are so overplayed that they get those “multiple listens” of which you speak? Or is there something inherently compelling in the seeking of meaning in complex, random lyrics, such that people are immediately drawn in?
While they aren’t generally stylistically complex, some songs with complex nonsense lyrics seem, at least to me as a young American, to be the ones that are simultaneously easiest to appreciate for a great many people, and also have huge staying power, despite being quite old. For example:
American Pie
Hotel California
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Don’t Stop Believing
Bohemian Rhapsody (or, really, most things by Queen)
These, at least among the places I’ve been here in America, are the ones to which everyone in the bar starts singing along. Sure, these have underlying meaning, or make references to specific events, but in my experience, most of the people I hear singing and dancing to these have no idea what they’re referencing, and often don’t even know the words. Perhaps it is simply that they are so overplayed that they get those “multiple listens” of which you speak? Or is there something inherently compelling in the seeking of meaning in complex, random lyrics, such that people are immediately drawn in?