“This is a good song.” I pause my other activities, point my finger in the air, like it could somehow touch the sound and function like an antenna, and give Matt a meaningful look. Matt glances back at me slightly indignantly, because he knows what’s expected of him.

“It reflects the way I feel about our current situation very well” I continue. Now the pressure is really on for Matt. I see him stare at nothing with a bland look in his eyes. He seems to listen to the song. But I can see, behind his eyes, that nothing seems to stick. Like his mind is a wall on which dozens of tiny suction cups try to fasten themselves but fail to create a vacuum and glide off without any result. Finally, after a minute or so, he speaks.

“I haven’t got a clue what that guy sings about. Sorry…” Just my luck, I’m stuck with a sound listener.

Music is one of the most important parts of my life. Just like I use writing partly for self-reflection I enjoy listening to music to reflect on my life and experiences. I therefore listen to lyrics intensely. I listen to the meaning of the words and have turned very creative in making up my own interpretations to make lyrics suitable for my own personal experiences.

I trust in lyrics. I am positively sure I can sometimes better let somebody listen to a certain song than try to put my feelings in words myself. For a writer to say such, you could conclude, I value lyrics highly.

It’s horrible, or actually really insulting, if I let someone hear an important song and they cannot hear it the way I do. They don’t understand the words, are unable to make an interpretation, or worst of all: they can’t concentrate on hearing the words. Because they tend to only listen to the music. They simply can’t be bothered with listening to lyrics. They are: sound listeners…

I always believed you had the dumb people who merely listen to the sound of music (Julie Andrews, get out of my head this instant!) and on the other hand the smart and intelligent people: the ones that listen to the lyrics. But this theory has been proofed wrong nearly a decade ago for the sake of preserving my friends, like Maia, or, more recently, Matt.

It doesn’t erase my curiosity, though. How do sound listeners actually listen? How could somebody who just listens to the music possibly experience as much thought and feeling as I do when I feel the lyrics?

I had to ask Darrell, for he is both a music fanatic and an experienced thinker and therefore the best person to help me with this issue. Or actually, to confirm my prejudices against the sound listener. I try to convince him that a sound listener can impossibly experience music in the rich and vivid way a lyrics listener can. Because while you listen to lyrics, you cannot escape the music. You might miss out on some details, but I’d say you’d still actively take in 90% of it. This can’t be done the other way around.

After explaining my thoughts to him, Darrell takes his usual time to ponder things over. Then he says a sound listener could just as well really listen and experience a song by analysing every note or whatever it is that sound listeners do, instead of experiencing the lyrics. I am not amused.

As usual, a simple question evolves in a complex, elaborate discussion, filling our entire daily lunch break walk. Together we try to make up a model to somehow visualise the different ways somebody could experience music, and show which way could be considered as better. A line? A circle? A quadrant? And how about cases in which 1+1 = 3? For instance, a lyric that contains the word ‘stop’ or ‘silence’ after which the music stops for a beat? This is a simple example of something you could only experience of a song when you listen to both the music and words.

We finally agree to disagree, but in the end, this wasn’t my goal of the conversation. I wanted him to agree with me, so I could finally be sure of the superior status of the lyric listener. Now I am not only stuck with a sound listener at home, I’m also stuck with the fact that I have no real ground to complain about it.

Maybe there really isn’t a best way to listen to a song. Maybe it’s only a case of difference, just like a man and woman differ in communication? The one isn’t better than the other, it’s just different. But if that’s the case, then wouldn’t it be true that, just like men and women, sound and lyrics listeners should learn from each other because the optimal truth is somewhere in the middle?

Angry with myself for writing about something I can’t neatly mould into a straight forward conclusion, I leave my laptop for the kitchen. There stands Matt, doing the dishes, while happily humming along with some punk rock with unidentifiable sung words. Somehow I’m unable to connect with this song. It’s like this time my own suction cups are out of order. Matt grabs another plate and almost dances through the room. I smile. My useless theory has just been outdone by practise.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, July 2nd, 2007.

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