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Does Humour Belong in Music?


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I seem to have the same attitude to humour in music as I do in life: I much prefer listening to someone whose wit and intelligence shines through rather than someone reciting jokes, desperate to amuse.

 

Stuff like Tom Waits, the Fall, Leonard Cohen, the Hold Steady and Arctic Monkeys could never be mistaken for comedy acts but I reckon the humour bleeds into a lot of what they do. Having said that, a lot of my favourite stuff can be entirely humourless (Joy Division, Van Morrison)...

 

I'm just trying to visualize the Venn diagram of people who I find funny, smart and have similar taste in music to me - it looks more like a series of tightly concentric circles 🙃

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8 minutes ago, Dankology said:

Stuff like Tom Waits, the Fall, Leonard Cohen, the Hold Steady and Arctic Monkeys could never be mistaken for comedy acts but I reckon the humour bleeds into a lot of what they do. Having said that, a lot of my favourite stuff can be entirely humourless (Joy Division, Van Morrison)...

Yes, for me the wry humour snuck in is better than going for the belly laugh.

Like The Smiths.... supposedly miserable, but some dry humour in there.

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25 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

I (with my other half) do open mics, the most popular song by quite a distance is Jilted John, never seem to hear it on the Radio these days 😄

 I was coming on here just to post this, and just because you beat me to it, I can't see any reason not to 😁 Genius...

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1 hour ago, Rich said:

Yes. My favourite line in any song ever: "but it's hard to get by when your àrse is the size of a small country".

I’ve always loved that one too, though my ultimate fave is from The Macc Lads

 

She said I were good lookin and I looked I bit like George Michael.

But she didn’t want a f*** cos she were on her menstrual cycle.

 

 

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We wouldn't even ask if humour belonged in poetry, and that's all that lyrics are, poetry. 

 

Humour belongs everywhere and in everything. It's just an alternate view to the serious stuff.

 

If the OP really meant to ask "do humourous lyrics detract from the actual music?"  I think not, however, I  do think that to write music that works with, and compliments lyrical humour is damn clever.

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