once when i was a kid i asked my mother why all
rock songs were about love. my mother thought about it
and said she guessed it was because teenagers think about love a lot. i reflected that that seemed
pretty stupid to me, when you consider all the other things that you could make
rock songs about. why not any rock songs about tree
houses? or cereal?
following that rationale i
sort of stopped caring about lyrics and preferred to just listen to the sounds.
"jet airliner" becomes kind of more
interesting when the lyrics are "we go turn the light on" instead of
"big old jet airliner," which is what i
thought for years.
this only started to change when boys - only a couple
of them - began to make me mix tapes. then lyrics
assumed a disproportionate role as the possible source of deep, compelling
truths about human relationships, if only they could be decoded properly. lyrics flowed into the vast void that yawned between what
secret desires i nurtured in myself and what actual,
verifiable information from boys was forthcoming.
this also speaks to your point about fantasy. the kinds of meaning that could be applied to lyrics, when
supplied by a boy and placed in context with other lyrics, were usually much
more profound and moving than anything the average fifteen year old boy is
capable of feeling, much less expressing. would a
straightforward love note have been more satisfying? in
a sense, maybe, but in another sense it would just have been a letdown.