Punk Albums With Great Lyrics
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 17-Nov-06 @ 11:55 AM| If only more bands would pick up on the underrated punk ethic of good lyrics, there'd be a lot more good music-punk or not. Put simply, good punk lyrics say something that's intended to be understood, and they say it with feeling. Where other rock genres can coast on mantras, mood or gaseous poetry. Punk rock requires lyrics as meaty as the music. Here are 10 albums that deserve a lyric sheet. |
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Buzzcocks Another Music In A Different Kitchen (United Artists,1978)  Love was not supposed to be punk rock’s subject, but Pete Shelley chewed it over like the amorous neurotic he was, covering the confusion of personalities (“I don’t know if I’m an actor or ham, a shaman or sham”), the perils of sexual exhaustion (“All this slurping and sucking, you know it’s putting me off my food”), and the ways that real love is both better and worse than fiction (“No fiction romantic could ever’ve predicted all the things that happen in my life”).
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Bad Religion Against The Grain (Epitaph,1990)  For this manifesto against bullshit, Brett Gurewitz and Greg Graffin were so full of purpose that even the latter’s maddening abuse of SAT words couldn’t drag it down. “Quality Or Quantity” proved they weren’t mere Marxists (“...don’t tell me they’re the same”), while the vividly metaphoric “Flat Earth Society” showed they weren’t mere polemicists either.
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The Replacements Let It Be (TWIN/TONE,1984)  Second to melody, Paul Westerberg’s greatest talent is empathy. Here, it’s offered to gender-ambiguous couples and anyone who’s ever gotten their tonsils out. But “Sixteen Blue” is the album’s most compassionate tune: “Your age is the hardest age, everything just drags and drags/You’re looking funny, you ain’t laughing are you?” Anyone who didn’t feel that way at 16 has lived either a charmed emotional life, or one overridden by truly dire circumstances.
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Leatherface Mush (ROUGHNECK,1991)  Between struggling to remember “a little bit of springtime in the back of my mind,” comparing the utility of all knowledge to that of knowing how to bake a potato, and making observations like, “You can hear a melancholy desert song and smell George Orwell as a funeral goes on,” singer Frankie Stubbs made fatalism satisfying on this melodic hardcore classic.
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The Clash London Calling (EPIC,1979)  Joe Strummer wrote “Lost In The Supermarket” for Jones to sing, but the sketch of urban anonymity may be his greatest lyrical achievement: “The kids in the halls and the pipes in the walls make me noises for company/Long distance callers make long distance calls, and the silence makes me lonely.” Add the sci-fi of “London Calling,” the historical fiction of “Spanish Bombs,” and the rock self-criticism “Death Or Glory,” and you’ve got the Clash’s omnibus.
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X More Fun In The New World (ELEKTRA,1983)  John Doe and Exene Cervenka had made better music, but their words were never sharper than on their third album, with brilliant metaphors (“Los Angeles treats everyone like a drunk in bed, washing dirty bums with rain like dishes on the floor”), cutting politics (“Both sides are right, but both sides murder”), and a parody of new wave careerists in the studio (“Bang, bang, make the music go bang!”).
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Stiff Little Fingers Inflammable Material (EMI,1979)  A response to extremists on all sides, written from the perspective of disgusted Belfast kids, Inflammable Material remains more politically relevant than any early punk document. But more courageous, in rock terms, than standing up to both the IRA and its protestant counterparts, they took the piss out of their own image with the Beach Boys-inspired “Barbed Wire Love”: “I met you in No Man’s Land, across the wire we were holding hands/Hearts a-bubble in the rubble, it was love at bomb site.”
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Ramones Ramones Mania (SIRE,1988)  Joey and Dee Dee had better pop phrasing than most pop artists (“Chewing out a rhythm on my bubblegum, sun is out and I want some”), and excised their demons more humorously than most humorists (“Now I guess I’ll have to tell ‘em /that I got no cerebellum”). And with “Bonzo Goes To Bitburg,” Joey sneaked the most vexed, anti-right-wing song ever written right past Republican Johnny’s amp.
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Dead Kennedys Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death (ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES,1987)  Jello Biafra said what you were thinking about yuppies, frat brats and authoritarians, but he’s not the lyrical cartoonist you may recall. In his rage at conformity, he turned one perfect phrase after another (“You’re a star-belly sneech, you suck like a leech, you want everyone to act like you”), nailed the portrayal of casual cruelty (“There’s six of us babe, so suck on my dick”) and got profoundly creepy (“I stare at you shopping, watch while you’re walking...and you’re pretty self-conscious, too”).
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The Pogues If I Should Fall From Grace With God (ISLAND,1988)  As much a punk (capital “P” and lowercase “p”) as anyone, Shane MacGowan can’t be left off this list just because he writes folk songs. But what many fans would consider his punk bona-fides-drunkenness and obscenity-are just the surface of a gift that rendered gambling into poetry (“Bookies were cursing, cars were reversing”), found romance in details (“With whiskey on Sunday and tears on our cheeks”), and birthed the most beautiful song ever written about NYC (“The wind blows right through you, it’s no place for the old”).
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