Words and Music Into the Future: A Songwriting Treatise and Manifesto
Literary criticism, songwriting analysis, and cultural commentary, Words and Music Into the Future is an uncompromising examination of the current state of popular songs and songwriting in the English-speaking world. Devoid of hero worship and celebrity gossip, using mostly well-known songs from recent decades as examples, Michael Koppy presents a compelling case that we listeners have been force-fed a steady diet of industrial illiteracy, and that the timer has come for songwriting and song criticism to riser to greater heights.
Whether you agree or disagree with the challenging, even heretical ideas presented in Words and Music Into the Future, it will forever change how you think about and hear popular music.
Sample chapters:
1. No, Don, the Levee Wasn't Dry--And No One Was Drinking Whiskey and Rye
2. There Goes The Robert E. Lee?
3. To What End?
4. A Personal Remembrance
5. A Later Kick in the Pants
6. Don't Shoot, Dammit! I'm Just the Messenger!
7. Politics? Religion? How About SONGS?!?
8. Ground Rule Number One
9. I'm Your Fan! You're My Hero!
10. Herds of Wildebeests Stampeding Across the Veldt!
11. Why Peeing Your Pants Beats the Hell Out Of Nostalgia
12. Madonna, Kanye, Coldplay, Bieber, U2, One Direction--Effluvia, Ephemera, Etcetera, Etcetera
13. See You at the Grammys!--A Note on Industrial Smarm Festivals
14. Ethics? In Popular Music...?!?
15. Dunno Much 'Bout Art, But I Know What I Like
16. Ever Notice the Worst Writing in an Insightful Pop Music Review--Even a Rave--Usually Shows Up When the Critic Quotes the Band's Lyrics?
17. Those Pesky, Over-Idealized Nineteen-Sixties
18. So Where Are We?
19. "Yeah, But You Really Hafta See 'Em Live!"
20. Over the Top? Ya Think?
21. Yes, We Too Are All So Very Sorry You Weren't Born on a Mississippi Cotton Plantation
22. Art School Confidential
23. Dance? Okay, Fine. Dance! Now Go Away.
24. It's All Greek--French, Swahili, Latin, Klingon--To Me.
25. Country Music is "Three Chords and the Truth" Computerized Drums, a Catering Truck, and a Smirk
26. Country's Brainier Half-Sibling: Americana
27. Tradition and Illusions of Same
28. The Disarmingly Enabling Inscience of Rap and Hip-Hop
29. Come to the Cabaret, Old Chum
30. Under a Stack of Marshall Amplifiers
31. Ethics? In SONGWRITING ITSELF...?!?
32. The Twentieth Century Ended Two Decades Ago
33. The Insolvency of 'Po-Mo'
34. Song Lyrics vs. Poems
35. "But It's Poetry!"--Refuge for the Inarticulate
36. Sincerity Ain't Depth
37. The Kids Are Alright!
38. La-Da-Da / Sha-La-Ti-Da
39. Is 'The Folk Process' an Expired Merchanism?
40. Lessons from Browne's "These Days" and Kristofferson's "Bobby McGee"
41. How About That! Some Country Music Is...
42. Get Me Rewrite!
43. Bob Dylan: Bad Writer, Bad Influence
44. Shallowness, Thy Name is Bob
45. Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard
46. If Ya Wanna Send a Message...
47. McCartney's Song Writing Lesson
48. Steve Sondheim Desperately Wishes He Were Right
49. Didn't I Just Hear That Song in a Commercial for Paper Towels? Insurance? Gum?
50. Should We Use A Number 37-A?
51. On Brightly Wrapped Packages
52. On Gilded Frames
53. Making Sausages
54. Making Music
55. Sure 'Authenticity' is Great--But It Doesn't Guarantee Good Work
56. Form Follows Function
57. Words Seek Music. Object: Matrimony.
58. Rules Were Made to be Broken. However--
59. Swan Song
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An incendiary, vigorous, well-written critique of the sorry state of today's popular songs. It's a much needed warning, a real wake-up call!
- Tom Lanham, San Francisco Examiner
A brilliant, cranky, obsessive work of cultural criticism that might change the way you think about popular music... Altogether an astute indictment of the know-nothing culture that elevates the loud and the overt, that indulges in reality television and cable news and dismisses anything difficult as pretentious... It's a terrific book!
- Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
I've never seen anything like this before. But so much of what he addresses are suspicions every intelligent listener has entertained, so it's wonderful to see them so ably presented... Koppy's an original thinker, and this is a great book.
- Phil Redo, WGBH Boston
Provocative is a big understatement, but his assertions are so well considered that we're forced to look harder at the music we allow into our lives, and ultimately agree with him on so much of what he exposes... Intriguing, challenging, funny-an enjoyable, enlightening read.
- Tom Ryan, American Hit Radio Network
I really enjoyed this. It's an erudite, eloquent, sometimes even downright funny book that actually makes me re-think many of my own assumptions-and I've been on the air here for over 30 years!
- Michael S. Stock, WLRN Miami
At various points, Words and Music Into the Future is hilarious, it's thought-provoking, and it's infuriating. All of which-even that last one-I mean as big positives.
- Jeff Miers, Buffalo News
Right up my alley... Well researched and well written, with provocative, vividly articulated critiques of songs and songwriters used as examples.
- George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune
Words and Music Into the Future has a spine of considered thought and persuasion, with an often insightful reading of the lyrics examined. When Koppy gets going, the heat rises fast and stays there. 'We all deserve better!' he says. There's an air of outrage and mission, written in a voice by turns declamatory and folksy, self-effacing and strong-minded-but always with a larger, more substantial agenda at work: this is a book about ideas.
- Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle
