“Listen to the words!” he cries…
Here’s how the newspaper summed up the event in it’s subdeck: Bowie’s a master, James Blunt misses the point completely. Singer-songwriter Jarvis Cocker celebrates the misunderstood art of composing pop lyrics.
Here are the first few paragraphs from the Telegraph article taken directly from the lecture…
———————————————————————————————————————–
Are lyrics important?
Take Louie Louie by the Kingsmen. The lyrics are unintelligible but it doesn’t matter: it just sounds right. There are at least 130 versions of Louie Louie out there, but none of them comes even close to that one.
Yet when a lyric and a piece of music really work together, the combined effect is much more powerful than either of them on their own. “We could be heroes just for one day” is a vaguely uplifting sentiment. But when I listen to the song, I’m there. I am swimming with the dolphins. When I’m listening to that song, Bowie has me sold on the whole package.
Because, apart from the words and the music, the delivery of the song is a massive factor in its success or failure. David Bowie delivers “Heroes” as if he’s trying to sing the throat out of his body, and the result is heroic.
———————————————————————————————————————–
:
You can read the full Telegraph piece
Jarvis has shown his appreciation for the work of David Bowie more than once over the years, the most recent being his performance of Space Oddity at Koko in Camden last year. (11.17.2006 NEWS: PULP MAN JARVIS DOES BOWIE FOR SOLO SHOW)
Somebody else who has recently expressed their fondness for Bowie via a live interpretation of one of his songs is
Click on the image above to view Lenny’s spot on version of the 1979 top thirty Bowie hit, DJ, on French music channel