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Kaley,

You opened up a very interesting door with your question about Jessy Moss's lyric. (Though I was referring to the entire song, the lyrics are fair game as well). I've long argued the point vehemently that Commercial and Artistic are 2 VERY different and often independent things. By saying something is more commercial is not ALSO saying it's better and it's certainly not even close to saying it's more artistic. But it seems from comments earlier here that some may not really understand the very clear distinctions.

An example would be a hit Rap song in any given week. Very commercial by simple fact that it's generating a LOT of commerce and that fact is indisputable. Whether it's better than any lyric here is probably a good question. I spent some time last week watching the MTV hits show (mostly with my mouth hanging open). It was horrificly bad. But all the artists being broadcasts were gigantic commercial successes. But the songs (and I use that word loosly) didn't' have any structure, didn't attempt to tell any story or make any real point, there was no melody and in many not even a chorus or bridge or verses. In fact, some were just a couple lame lines of text repeated over and over without melody OR even an interesting rhythm bed. But it doesn't matter. They were extremely commercial. Everyone needs to stop equating commercial with great or even good. They also need to stop equating non commercial with amateur.

I mentioned Jessy Moss's Alternative song because someone suggested that that was a genre that would fall into the non commercial category. But in the case of that song, it's about as close to all the stuff that was on the MTV hits show as anything I have heard. (In fact, her song did what they were doing much better and with far more merit in my opinion). It's not surprising. She was on 3 major labels prior to going Indie and she's way ahead of the hip curve. It doesn't mean her lyrics are BETTER than anything here.. only that they are more commercial than most of what is found here. So it would be silly for anyone to try and mimic or learn from her lyric on an artistic level. However on a commercial level, her sound and the way the song is performed and written would be a great lesson for what is popular right now today on MTV and elsewhere. (He video for the same song would be right at home on MTV as well). Both her song and her video are still posted on our site and anyone who did any voting during the awards process this year can easily still access them (and all the other winning songs for that matter).

There's no doubt in my mind that if we posted (which we can't do legally by the way.. without permission) the lyrics of the top hits of today that everyone here could easily rip them apart and write something artistically better. Heck, remember the Nora Jones Grammy Winning Song of the Year Don't Know Why? The lyrics to that song are like little kids wrote them. Really bad. Doesn't matter. It was a commercial smash. As inane as those lyrics are, they still WORK in context of the song. And though I don't care for much of what is popular right now, it's undeniable that any song that can sell millions of copies is a commercial success no matter what we think of the quality. The lesson here is be careful when using words like Commercial or even artistic for that matter. There is no clear cut way to segregate. Genres certainly don't do it. Heck, the song that "moved" me emotionally the most this year was in Portugeuse.. I have no idea WHAT the lyrics even are.

That leads us to a whole new topic. Weak lyrics never stop a song from being a hit. Strong lyrics alone rarely ever cause a song to be a hit. Commercial success will rarely derive from the lyrics. (Yes, there are some exceptions as there are in all things). Someone else suggested the importance of the lyricists here stepping over and working with or learning from the musicians here. That's good advice. Because sadly the truth is that your lyric alone is unlikely going to get you anywhere unless you can marry it with music that will move the listeners first. Without that, you're at a big disadvantage. That's why hits can have lame lyrics, but rarely do hits have music that the audience doesn't find hip, cool or moving.

Food for thought.

Brian